piano sustain pedal plugins?

[Bendelsohn]

Does anyone know of any free/inexpensive plugins that would simulate a piano sustain pedal? Ideally, one that can turn on and off mid-song without the need for multiple instances.

[itroitnyah]

I was about to say that most DAWs come with a free reverb plugin, because that's what I remember the sustain pedals on my families piano doing. I haven't played it in a long time though, so googling has told me otherwise.

While this thread is here, what exactly does a piano sustain pedal do, because the answer I found was that they either reduced the number of strings hit, one shifts the piano notes in some way, and one sort of does something to only one half of the keyboard

[Conduit]

@OP I think most daws have this built in, I know logic does at least. If you look under the section where you can change note velocity, modulation, and that stuff there should be an option for it.

@Itroitnyah It does what I says on the tin, sustains the note. Normally with a piano the note only plays for as long as you hold the key, but if you press down the sustain pedal the note will live out either the full duration of the strings vibrating, or until you take your foot off the pedal.

[colortwelve]

Normally with a piano the note only plays for as long as you hold the key, but if you press down the sustain pedal the note will live out either the full duration of the strings vibrating, or until you take your foot off the pedal.

So by that logic couldn't you just program a piano patch with sustain built into it and then write the piano roll notes so that they overlap?

[Conduit]

Normally with a piano the note only plays for as long as you hold the key, but if you press down the sustain pedal the note will live out either the full duration of the strings vibrating, or until you take your foot off the pedal.

So by that logic couldn't you just program a piano patch with sustain built into it and then write the piano roll notes so that they overlap?

Yep, that's normally how I do it, it can get a bit messy copying midi between piano and something like strings though. Pianos have really long natural sustain normally, so it can also get pretty messy if you make all nots live out their full duration.

[CitricAcid]

MIDI CC64 is usually mapped to sustain in any synth. Set it to 127 to turn sustain on, and set it to 0 to turn sustain off. I would be surprised if that didn't work.

[itroitnyah]

If that's all it does, then shouldn't there be a knob for the attack, sustain, decay and release, so you should just be able to create an automation clip for the sustain knob?

[Conduit]

Yo it's a piano, it doesn't have adsr knobs, same as every other real instrument. Also, the point of a sustain pedal is that you can apply it as needed. If you just press it to the floor for an entire piece you get the muddiest sound. A release knob would be really frustrating to work with.

[CitricAcid]

If that's all it does, then shouldn't there be a knob for the attack, sustain, decay and release, so you should just be able to create an automation clip for the sustain knob?

It's a DAW; you can have a knob for whatever parameters you want. You just have figure out how to map it (either by MIDI learn or something else). If you want to map and/or automate the ADSR on your synth, go for it.

I'm not sure what you mean by "create an automation clip for the sustain knob" though. The sustain pedal is simply meant to hold all notes on until it's released. It's a boolean on/off switch.

[itroitnyah]

@Conduit
Ok, well, since technically this piano isn't "real" and is a synth type thingy for whatever DAW OP is using, there are probably knobs relating to the decay and release along with a bunch of other knobs controlling various parameters.

@CitricAcid
automation clips are those things that have the lines and the points that you move and then the function that the automation clip is attached to will be changed based on the automation clip. So essentially, when OP would want to "release the pedal" he would simply create a sort of "cliff" in the automation clip that returns the automated parameter to its original position.

[CitricAcid]

@CitricAcid
automation clips are those things that have the lines and the points that you move and then the function that the automation clip is attached to will be changed based on the automation clip. So essentially, when OP would want to "release the pedal" he would simply create a sort of "cliff" in the automation clip that returns the automated parameter to its original position.

Gotcha. I think it was the words "clip" and "sustain knob" that were adding to my confusion. Cubase doesn't use the term "clip" when referring to automation, and sustain doesn't belong on a knob, it belongs on a pedal. I thought you were suggesting drawing an ADSR envelope or something for the sustain, which wouldn't make sense.

[Conduit]

@Conduit
Ok, well, since technically this piano isn't "real" and is a synth type thingy for whatever DAW OP is using, there are probably knobs relating to the decay and release along with a bunch of other knobs controlling various parameters.

@CitricAcid
automation clips are those things that have the lines and the points that you move and then the function that the automation clip is attached to will be changed based on the automation clip. So essentially, when OP would want to "release the pedal" he would simply create a sort of "cliff" in the automation clip that returns the automated parameter to its original position.

Even though it's software a piano wouldn't be a piano if it didn't act like one. Sampled pianos still oly play a note for as long as you hold it. Most don't have adsr either since they aren't synths.

[itroitnyah]

Well FL Keys has a bunch of knobs like that. I'm guessing that a lot of the Kontakt piano libraries and such don't have the adsr knobs that FL Keys has, for much the reason of being sampled instruments. With that logic, I'm not sure how a sustain pedal plugin would work in a sampled instrument either, haha.