Sustain pedal

The sustain pedal is one idea everywhere in the system. A press is a region in a MIDI clip, drawn in the lane under the piano roll or recorded from the pedal on your keyboard, and each instrument decides what holding means for it: the piano lifts its dampers and lets the other strings ring, the synths hold released voices at their sustain level. Playback, export, seeking and loops all treat the pedal the same way.

When to use it

Any piano part. Pads and chords on a synth where you want the release to carry across a change of hand position. A sampled instrument you want to play legato without holding every key. It is also the easiest way to add resonance to a piano passage without touching reverb.

Controls

The pedal lane

Below the velocity lane, the Sustain lane shows presses as bars. Drag across empty space to draw a press, snapped to the grid, or hold Alt to place it freely. Drag a press to move it and its edges to trim it; double-click it, or press Delete with it focused, to remove it. Presses that touch or overlap merge into one. The sequencer draws the same presses as a thin bar under the clip’s notes.

Timing at the edges

At a boundary the pedal moves before the notes. A note that ends exactly where the pedal lifts is damped; a note that starts exactly where it goes down is held. That makes a clean change of harmony on the beat: draw the new press to start where the old one ends.

Playing it live

Controller 64 at 64 or above is pedal down. While you play through MIDI input, the pedal holds released notes on the audition engine, and pressing it before the first note prepares the engine so that note is held too. In a recording each press becomes a region in the new clip, closed at the stop if it is still down. Half-pedalling is not modelled; the pedal is down or up.

Which instruments respond

The Piano implements real dampers and pedal resonance, so a held chord blooms. The Synth, Wavetable and Sampler hold released voices until the pedal lifts, and the Resonator defers its damping. Strings and Drums ignore the pedal: a bow does not sustain with a foot, and drum hits are one-shots.

Seeking and loops

Starting playback inside a press restores the pedal state, so a chord chased from the middle of a bar rings as it should. A press that spans a loop boundary stays down across the wrap and lifts at its own end.

Tips

• Draw the pedal after the notes are right. A press that covers a passing note smears it on the piano; shorten the press or split it at the note.
• The piano’s Pedal resonance control sets how much the pedal adds; the lane decides when.
• Removing a press while a note is held releases that note at once during playback, so you can audition pedal edits without restarting.