Foot Pedals

What the names mean

Piano pedals were named for what they did to the strings of a grand. Keyboard pedals borrowed the names, so a ‘damper’ and a ‘sustain’ pedal are the same thing seen from two sides.

Damper / sustain

— On a piano, felt dampers rest on the strings and stop them ringing when you let go of a key; the right pedal lifts every damper so notes sustain after you release them. A keyboard sustain pedal sends the same instruction (MIDI CC 64) – notes keep sounding until you lift your foot. ‘Damper pedal’ and ‘sustain pedal’ are the same socket.

Half-damper / half-pedalling

— On a real piano you can lift the dampers part-way for a partial sustain. Cheap pedals are switches (on or off); half-damper pedals contain a continuous sensor and send a value from 0 to 127, and a keyboard that understands it (most stage pianos, Nord, Roland, Yamaha, Korg) will sustain notes by degrees. On anything else the same pedal simply behaves as an on/off switch.

Sostenuto

— The middle pedal on a grand. It sustains only the notes you were holding when you pressed it, and nothing you play afterwards – handy for holding a bass note under a moving line. Only three-pedal units and some stage pianos offer it (MIDI CC 66).

Soft / una corda

— The left pedal. On a grand it shifts the hammers sideways so they hit one string (‘una corda’) instead of three, giving a softer, more muted tone. Digital pianos emulate this on the left pedal of a triple unit (MIDI CC 67).

Footswitch

— A generic on/off switch in a small box. Plug it into a sustain socket and it sustains; into an ‘assignable’ or ‘footswitch’ socket and the keyboard decides what it does – start/stop a sequencer, change patch, toggle an arpeggiator, tap tempo.

Expression

— A rocker pedal (like a car accelerator) containing a potentiometer, so it sends a continuous value rather than on/off. The keyboard or synth maps that to whatever it likes: volume, filter cutoff, a synth’s mod wheel, Leslie speed. Uses a three-conductor TRS plug because the pot needs three wires. MIDI CC 11 by default.

Volume pedal

— Mechanically the same rocker, but wired as a simple two-wire (TS) attenuator that sits in an audio path or a ‘volume pedal’ socket. Organ-style volume pedals – Studiologic’s VP series, for example – are volume pedals; they usually won’t work in an expression socket that expects three conductors.

Triple pedal unit

— Soft, sostenuto and sustain in one bar, mirroring a grand. Some use one TRS cable carrying all three (and often need a specific piano to decode it), others give you a separate ¼" plug per pedal so any keyboard with three sockets will do.

Polarity, latching and why a pedal can work backwards

Polarity (normally open / normally closed)

— A sustain pedal is just a switch, and manufacturers never agreed which way round it should be. Yamaha, Korg and most others expect the switch to be open at rest and close when pressed (‘normally open’, NO, ‘+’ polarity); Roland, Casio and some older gear expect the opposite (‘normally closed’, NC, ‘–’). Plug the wrong kind in and the keyboard reads ‘sustain on’ at rest and ‘off’ when you press – everything rings until you step on the pedal. Many keyboards read the pedal state at power-up and auto-detect; if yours doesn’t, you need the right polarity.

Polarity switch

— A small slide switch on the pedal that flips it between NO and NC, so one pedal works with anything. Worth the extra pound or two unless you are sure of your keyboard. Studiologic sells the same VFP1 pedal three ways: /10 normally open, /15 normally closed, /25 with the switch.

Momentary vs latching

— A momentary switch is only ‘on’ while your foot is down – that is what sustain needs, and every pedal on this page is momentary. A latching switch clicks and stays on until you press it again, like a guitar stomp-box bypass. Plug a latching switch into a sustain socket and notes will hang until you stomp again; some keyboards let you assign a momentary pedal to latching functions (arp hold, rotary fast/slow) in software instead.

TS vs TRS

— Tip-Sleeve is a two-conductor mono plug; Tip-Ring-Sleeve is three-conductor (the same plug as stereo headphones). Switch pedals need two wires, so they are TS. Expression pedals need three – power in, wiper out, ground – so they are TRS. Half-damper and single-cable triple pedals are also TRS. A TRS pedal in a TS socket usually just works as a switch; a TS pedal in an expression socket does nothing useful.

Range / minimum control

— A knob or slider on an expression pedal (Roland EV-5, Korg EXP-2, Yamaha FC7, Nektar NX-P) that sets the value sent with the pedal fully up. Set it to zero to use the full sweep; raise it so the ‘heel down’ position is a quiet level rather than silence – useful when the pedal controls volume live.

Which one do I need?

For most people with a MIDI controller: a piano-style sustain pedal with a polarity switch (M-Audio SP-2, Alesis ASP-2, Studiologic VFP1/25). It feels like a piano and works with anything.

If you play a stage piano that supports it, a half-damper pedal (Roland DP-10, Yamaha FC3A, Korg DS-1H, Nord Single Pedal 2) is the biggest realism upgrade you can buy – check your keyboard’s manual for a ‘half-damper’ or ‘continuous’ pedal input.

Only buy an expression pedal if your keyboard has an expression socket (most 49-key-and-up controllers do; almost no mini keyboards). Then pick by feel: the Yamaha FC7 and Nord EP30 are big and heavy with a long throw, the Roland EV-5 and Korg EXP-2 are compact.

Box footswitches are for assignable jobs – sequencer start/stop, tap tempo, patch up – or for throwing in a laptop bag. Their action is nothing like a piano pedal.

Pedals never come with a keyboard-specific cable: a ¼" pedal will plug into any ¼" socket. Mini controllers with a 3.5 mm socket (Nektar LX Mini, Arturia KeyStep) ship with an adapter.