The proper way to mark sustain pedal for MuseScore playback and live performer?

Question

Thanks in advance for your help here. I am very new to music theory and notation. As such, I may struggle with your reply if it has a lot of musical vocab. I'm using a great free music notation program called MuseScore. I have written a new piano score, but am still confused about the proper way to indicate pedal sustain in the score. Apparently, one school of thought says that if you are sustaining the notes in a measure, then start a new measure with similar notes, the sustain pedal should end on the first note of the next measure. The other school says the sustain pedal should be released at the end of the notes in each measure, and begin again on the next measure. I have written the score notation showing both approaches (see below). Which approach is correct; system 1 or system 2?

Alternatively, since this sustain pattern will occur throughout the entire piece, is there some text note I can add to the score instead, to simply tell the player to use and release pedal sustain on the bass clef for every measure?

I want to hear my score with MuseScore's built in playback synthesizer. How do I mark the pedal to achieve accuracy and also be useful to a live performer?

Here is my attempt to properly notate pedal sustain, based on answers above.

My problem is, MuseScore, the software I am using, does not draw sustain lines the way they seem to be needed. Using square brackets rather than sloped ones, as Dekkadeci said, the lines overlap if I include the first note of the next measure (system 1). It only works if I use sloped lines. Conversely, if I just bracket all the notes in a measure (example 2), the square lines start and end on a note, but do not encompass them (see image above). Further, if I use system 2, but the bass notes stop in the middle of the measure, the pedal sustain would not extend to the end of the measure, so the treble notes would not all be sustained. So, what the heck do I do now?

Answer 1

For a human performer

Both notations are acceptable and mean the same thing, even though they appear to indicate separate release points. In general, the pedal is "changed" (released and reapplied) at the beginning of the "next" measure. Releasing at the end of a measure leaves and audible gap in sound between that measure and the next.

For pieces intended for beginners or students, pedal is often marked throughout. However, more conventionally, it's left to the performer. A typical way to handle this is to place pedal markings in the first measure (or two or three), and then write "Ped. sim." or "Pedal simile", which means "keep pedaling in a similar way" (see below). If you want a departure from that (say, a specific way of pedaling that's different), you would notate that explicitly at the appropriate place in the score.

Note that in the above example I've used another style of pedal indication, but, as indicated, the ones in the OP are just fine as well.

For the MuseScore synthesizer

To get the best effect from MuseScore's playback, I would use your first notation. This would be acceptable for a human, and not uncommon in modern scores.

To keep the score cleaner, you could make the pedal markings not visible after a certain point. MuseScore will still play them, but then you can use the "Ped. simile" for the human.

Answer 2

Maybe this is just more noise, but I'm going to try to clear up some of the confusion, inadvertently raised by the other answers.

So, first of all, let's separate this into 2 problems:

• what's the proper way notation wise?
• What's the proper way in musescore?

==Notation wise==

There's 2 types of notation:

1. using "Ped. *"
2. using lines

Some prefer one, others prefer the other. No matter, you should never mix them. For the purpose of the examples here, I will.

The system (2.) using the lines, will use both sloped and straight corners. They have different meanings.

-- So let's look at situation a) here --

a.1 and a.2 seem to be identical in meaning and the way they're pedalled, but they might not:

a.1 is ambiguous. You can either release the pedal at the end of the measure and re-press at the beginning of the next. -or- you can play legato, keep the pedal pressed until the first note of the next measure and then quickly pump. It's left to the player to decide what's appropriate.

a.2 is NOT ambiguous: at the end of the measure the pedal is release and re-pressed at the beginning of the next and there will be a clear, audible gap. Most of the times, this is NOT what you want. If you want to achieve legato, this is not it.

For a.2 we're using straight, 90° corners here. That's the only valid option. No slopes. The straight corners indicate "press pedal" and "release pedal" respectively. Nothing more, nothing less.

-- Ok, so let's look at situation b) then --

b.1 is identical to a.1, since there's no way to make things more clear using this notation.

b.2 however is different: it starts with a straight corner and uses the sloped ones on the first note of the next measure. This tells the player unambiguously they need to keep the pedal pressed until the note of the next measure starts and then pump quickly.

So what's with those corners? You only use the sloped ones to indicate a pump. That's it.

Proper notation:

Anything else is improper notation: starting with a sloped line, having 2 straight corners on one note etc.

Conclusion:

Use whatever notation system you want, but "ped. *" is ambiguous and the lines are not, and you should never mix both.

== Musescore ==

All of the above sound almost identical in musescore. (Not quite though, a.2 and b.2 sound slightly different to my ears) if you want more control you'll need to start editing it in a DAW where you can decide exactly where the pedal will be pressed and released.

Now, in order to use notation a.2, simply select the measure and click on this specific button:

If however you wish to use b.2, you need to select the entire measure and the first note of the next one, then click the appropriate button out of 3:

Hope this clears things up.

Answer 3

I disagree with Aaron's answer - only System 1 shows the correct approach if you want to sustain all notes in each measure. System 2 greatly risks the human player lifting the pedal early in the last beat (e.g. Beat 4.5) and therefore breaking sustain early.

(Both systems are technically written incorrectly, as pedal lines should start and end with square, perpendicular corners a la |_ and _|, not sloped lines.)

The Ped.-and-* notation for pedalling pretty much forces you to write like System 2 even if your intent is System 1, but I hate that notation and never use it myself for exactly that reason.

To my knowledge, Musescore will play back the pedalling in both systems similarly to the human I mention in my first paragraph, so play it safe and use System 1's pedal notation instead.

The preferred pedalling notation I use, and the one I recall seeing in all my beginner piano books, is the one implied to be marked "invisible" in the last picture of Aaron's answer - start with |_, mark pedal pumps with _^__, then end with _|.

Answer 4

The two notations command two quite different things. 1. indicates an overall legato, with a pedal 'change' on the first note of each bar. Think a phrase mark over the entire passage. This is normal 'legato pedalling'.

2. asks for a break at each barline. Think a separate phrase mark over each individual bar.

Yes, a 'change' should be an upward V within an otherwise continuous line. 'Up and finished with pedal' is a vertical hook.

MuseScore has four pedal line shapes that can build any of them.