Without pushing down you can hear that as soon as I lift my hand from the keys, the notes stop ringing. Now play the same notes but first I'll push down the sustain pedal and hold it down the entire time. Even though I lifted my hand from the keys, the strings of the piano continue to reverberate and the notes continue to sound So the notes were sustained. But you can also hear how they all just kind of blended together. Now there might be the kind of sound that you're going for, like a blended together blurry, dreamy sound, but in general, we don't want the notes blended together like that. And that's where pedaling technique comes in.

First, let's play a series of five notes with the right hand. They're the same five notes that I just played earlier in this video. So I'll use first finger on middle C, and I'll pick up my hand after playing each note to make it really obvious to my muscles. What it is that I want them to do. Watch me first and then pause the video and practice on your own. After you're comfortable with each step of the exercise, come back and continue with the video.

Okay, here we go. Pretty simple All right, pause the video here and practice that even though it's very easy. And you can do it on your first time, pause and do it on your own because we're going to keep adding on to this number, the same thing again and this time or as a pedal. So just a quick note about how to push down the pedal. Keep your heel on the floor, and put your toes on the pedal. You don't want to cover the pedal all the way because then it's very hard to control.

You don't want to do like a sideways thing. I've seen all kinds of stuff, but this is the right way. So basically the path of your foot on the pedal. If you if you feel better pulling it back a little bit, that's fine. But if you go back too far, you might slide off and again you have very little control. So you'll have to find your own sweet spot there.

So push down the pedal and then to notice that my heel didn't lift. So it's not like pumping air into your bicycle tires. It's more like tapping your foot, okay, but you're tapping it down and up like this. When you lift up, don't let the pedal pop up. So you're not, you're not letting go of the pedal all the way. You're keeping in contact with it down, you're up, you're down, you're up, but you're always touching it.

Now let's practice changing the pedal, push it down. Then when you want to change it, you do a quick Up, down, up, down, up, down. So we don't give an equal amount of time to the up and the down. The up is really quick, almost like we can't wait to go down again, up, down, up down. That's called changing the pedal or clearing the pedal. Pause the video here and press To start until it feels comfortable.

Play to see and push down the pedal. Now keep the pedal down, lift up your hand, play the D and hold it down. Then change the pedal up, down. So we're changing the pedal just after you play the note, not at the same time, and not a long time later. It's almost like the foot is trying to catch up to the hand but it's always late. Now hold on to the pedal, lift your hand and play he knocked down with the foot.

Keep the pedal down, lift your hand and play f then change the pedal right after. Keep the pedal down, play G, then change the pedal. I'll play the notes going down now and use the pedal and I won't say what I'm doing so that you could just focus on watching and listening to the Now pause the video here and practice this. When you can do it easily with your right hand, practice it with your left hand. Now practice both hands at the same time. So I'm going to play the same thing we did with one hand at a time, but it'll be two hands together.

So, put down the pedal and the fingers at the same time. Hold the pedal with the hands. Lift, lift, lift, lift, change lives. Change Lift, change, lift lane change. So I say it with that rhythm play change because that's how you want to feel like you want to play first. So it's not playing change at the same time it's play, and then practice that.

Now I'll do an exercise that's a little more advanced. It'll be the same exact notes and pedaling. The only difference is that we won't be lifting your hand in between each note so you'll be connecting the notes to one another. I'll show you my left hand, play and push down the pedal. Now, don't think of your hand, play the next note. Let the next note play the next note.

So play first and then change the pedal play play, play, play, play. pause here, practice that and then also practice it with the right hand. Now let's do that exercises both hands. So flow both hands will play see down the pedal. Now, move to the next node, keep the pedal down. Play, play, play, play, play, play, play.

Practice that practice. This lesson several times and come back to it to review using the pedal. As you go on with this course, getting the coordination of the hands and the foot takes a bit of time and pedaling is something that you'll be working on for a while, like everything else. It eventually starts to all fall into place and feel really comfortable.