Reddit mentions: The best keyboard pedals & footswitches

What do you mean by beginner gear? Like, the type of piano?

Well, if you already got one that's decent, get as much mileage as you can out of it. Otherwise you have to find one yourself. The temptation is to get something cheap at first and then, if you feel serious about piano, you get a good keyboard. The trouble is, you'll end up learning some bad habits and possibly discourage yourself from continuing. There are really only two things you need your keyboard to have: (1) 88-keys and (2) weighted touch. Without those, you're ensuring you'll have to buy two keyboards :) I know the FAQ has more info, but I'm a huge fan of anything Yamaha. I have a Motif ES 8 from 2004 that still works perfectly.

This is all assuming you're serious about learning piano, whether classical or jazz or rock. If you're just into having a keyboard for MIDI input, which I guess is a thing, then a small synthesizer will do. Also, make sure that, with your keyboard, you have some way of hearing the music. Some models have built in speakers. Others do not, so you will either use headphones forever or have to buy an amp, which will drive up the cost a bit.

Make sure you also get a sustain pedal. Some keyboards come with built in pedals. Others do not. You only need one, and they look like this. Any type will do and if you plug into the sustain port it will function properly. You do not need a soft pedal or sostenuto pedal (The left and center ones on an acoustic piano), since pretty much no one ever uses them for anything. Trust me, I've been playing for 20+ years, more than half of them professionally. You'll play maybe five pieces in your life that actually need soft pedal, and I've only played one that used the middle pedal.

Aside from that, if you have a DAW then you should be able to plug your keyboard into that for easy, higher-quality recording. That's how I've made most of my tutorial videos for my students. It's not required of course, but if you are using a keyboard that doesn't have its own speakers built in and want to record yourself playing you'll need something like that. Audacity is free - no need to purchase expensive software unless you want to seriously get into recording and mixing.

Oh man, I went through this same transition ten years ago. Grew up in and apartment, and parents only bought me a Yamaha from Best Buy. I eventually saved up and picked up a Yamaha P60.

My Struggle:

• Weighted keys. Learning proper dynamic control. The amount of sensitivity required to play weighted keys properly is insane compared to playing on a non-weighted keyboard. Your fingers may hurt at first, and you may even compelled to force your fingers down in order to get it as loud as you want. My advice to you is to be gentle and patient with the keys, and the strength will come in time. Don't ever try to "force your fingers" down through the keys, or you'll develop some really bad habits. Similarly, make sure you press the key down all the way when you play and not just "play on the surface".
  
  
• Pedaling. If you can, get one of those Yamaha pedals that feel like a real piano, like the Yamaha FC3 which actually offers half pedaling and that sort of thing. It will make the transition to a real piano a lot easier.
  
  
• Learning proper "volume". The downside of having learned on a digital instrument with volume control is that we can turn the volume down in order to play quietly. Try to learn to control dynamics through your fingers. You should be able to play both forte and piano with the volume anywhere from 25% - 50%.
  
  
• Learning to use the weight of your arm to guide your playing. This is applicable to things like arpeggios and phrases / passages that are not playable with a five finger position. I found that this is really hard to learn on a non-weighted keyboard, and a lot of fun once you can do it correctly -- sweeping up and down the keyboard playing fancy sounding licks. It's harder to get a feel for this on a keyboard, but if you practice arpeggios a lot, you'll know what I'm talking about.
  
  As for unlearning habits... patience, and a good piano teacher.
  
  All your theory, sheet music, and hand coordination will carry over easily. Same with moving your fingers. The hard part is properly learning to play the piano, and making it sing. It will feel like an entirely different instrument to you.

Ahh, transcription. I've always found this to be the grindiest of the "grind" work. Do it for free this time, but get ready to demand some rates.

• To be efficient at transcription, you really really have to develop skills yourself. It ain't easy. First off, make sure you know exactly what they want in the end, so you don't have to go back and re-do certain work that will take a tremendous amount of time later. Do they want every "uh, uhm, hmm." transcribed? Is there a specific format? How often do they want time-stamps, and how do they want them formatted?
  Make sure you are locked in with that NOW, because going back and re-doing that work, particularly if you have HOURS of interviews to transcribe, will be a significant burden later. Do a couple minutes of it (a few pages) and do the back and forth with them on format now so that from here, you just do it once.
  
  
• Bone up on your typing skills and tricks. Specifically, consider setting up a set of shortcut words, and learn them. You can set up keyboard shortcuts to instantly translate various word combinations into full words in your word processor. For instance, when you type "mky" it would then autocorrect it to "monkey." If you have major, long, difficult words that keep repeating, this will save you significant time and energy, even if you are a fast typist.
  
  
• Bite off small chunks, particularly at the beginning. Break your clips up into 15 minute pieces, or even less. As your skill and speed improves, you'll be able to go through all this stuff more accurately in larger chunks.
  
  
• If this is, in fact, something you think you'll pursue for any amount of time and money, I strong suggest getting a footpedal and perhaps software for transcribing. The footpadal makes it so much easier - you aren't taking your fingers off the keyboard to stop and rewind. Here's what I'm talking about: http://www.amazon.com/Express-Scribe-Transcription-Pedal-Bundle/dp/B009V62AMU
  
  Start slow, take it easy, be patient, figure out how to create an efficient system that will help you to be accurate the first go-around so that you can start tearing through the material.

So, my push-to-talk pedal is 3 different components: The pedal itself is actually the sustain pedal that came with my digital Yamaha piano (any other sustain pedal like this would work though), it connects to my PC through USB using this device (StealthSwitch3), and in order to convert the pedal's 1/4" connection into a 3.5mm connection that the StealthSwitch3 needs I used one of these adapters.

The StealthSwitch3 has software to easily map the pedal to a keybinding (I use right-shift for mine).

Unfortunately, your second question is a bit harder to answer because there really *aren't* many "PC" specific pedals. There are cheap plastic USB foot pedals but they all have horrible reviews (even from another poster in this thread) and seem to be super unreliable. The closest alternative to those is a pretty steep jump, though. My second set of pedals is a USB set built for PC, but they are intended for Flight Sims and that level of interaction, so they are a bit overboard (and expensive as a result). They have their own software that makes key/axis mapping pretty easy as well (but for my purposes I'm actually just using them with their default axis settings).

"dirt" pedals are overdrive, fuzz, or distortion pedals because they 'dirty' up your signal

if you're okay with waiting, used is always the best to go in terms of cost. if not, here's a small list of cheap, simple pedals that work

delay:

tc electronic the prophet


joyo d-seed


boss dd-3

joyo delay

donner yellow fall analog delay

reverb:

mosky spring reverb

tc electronic drip

caline snake bite

behringer dr-600

chorus:

mxr analog chorus

joyo classic chorus

biyang chorus

danelectro fab chorus

volume pedal:

ernie ball

boss fv-50h

power supply:

cs7

mxr iso brick

here's a cheap/basic place to start. since you're going simple, most pedals you come across will honestly work with what you want you want to accomplish, it's mostly down to your budget. if you're looking used, you can't go wrong with MXR, boss, and EHX pedals, they're usually everywhere on the used market

How do you like those pedals? The switching action in the op's sounds loud and looks kind of clunky. I found people on racing forums talking about these sustain pedals, they look like they have better action and I like the 1/4 mono jack idea.

These (NP-1 not NP-2 which is a m-audio clone) are at a slightly lower price point and have a wider stepping area. The company also makes a m-audio equivalent, do you think that style is better than the flat wide step version?

If your controller has an input for a continuous pedal (these usually look like standard 1/4" jacks), then you can plug one of these or these in.

Note that this won't work in a keyboard's "Sustain Pedal" input, which is designed for a basic off/on pedal. You need a jack that is designed for a continuous pedal.

Depending on your MIDI controller, you should be able to assign this pedal to control expression (11), volume (7), modulation (1), or any CC. But some controllers may limit your options.

If your controller has MIDI IN, you could also get a knob controller like this one, and control any number of parameters. The BCR also has pedal inputs but I can't remember if it accepts continuous pedals.

Try something like this for your keyboard pedal solution. As for the sheet music, I don't know if you could locate it for free online since the composer is still alive. I looked through the websites I use for my sheet music, but I had no luck. For one piece though, it should only be a few bucks, so I wouldn't worry too much about the cost.

can anyone recommend a good electronic pedal that's durable? preferably local to australia as well

i purchased this one before and it broke after a few weeks

https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-LP7A-3-Pedal-DGX-660-Black/dp/B0029RVWUO

I don't know if third party pedals are supported, This is the official 3-pedal unit for that piano. I actually have the DGX 650 and bought this pedal. It says DGX 660 but that's just because it's the latest in the line. When I bought it actually said 640 so...lol. It does support "half pedaling". Not the best feeling pedals but they suffice .

Here's the first thing I clicked on Amazon:
https://www.amazon.com/Luminously-Universal-Electric-Sustain-Keyboard/dp/B019PRTFU4

Comments from users suggest that it should work on most keyboards and behaves like an accoustic pedal (more pressure, more pedal). I'd look into it to be sure though.

https://www.amazon.com/Signstek-Guitar-Stereo-Amplitude-Adjusted/dp/B00FZJ25TU/ref=sr_1_fkmr0_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1493217846&sr=8-4-fkmr0&keywords=dophne+volume+pedal


This is the one I am using. I bought it in 2015 and it seems the price has gone up since then. With amazons policy though it's definitely worth trying and if it doesn't work well just send it back.

My 30 year conclusion (yes...it took me 30 years to figure this out) is that the "pedal" part of a cheap pedal is rarely the problem. It's the cheap jack part of the pedal that eventually breaks/wears out from pulling it in and out every night.

I use this for my double axe rig: https://www.amazon.com/Studiologic-Piano-Style-Polarity-Keyboards-Controllers/dp/B00C4VTCZC

It's got two mono jacks - basically it's two pedals in one. About two years ago I gave it to my soundman who replaced the original jacks (just the ends) for some heavy duty ones.

I don't like pedals that slide around...the double pedal helps.

Is something like this what you're looking for?

https://www.amazon.com/Midiplus-SP-2-midiplus-Sustain-Pedal/dp/B00WU6FDOK

it's not a volume pedal, but I use a Moog Ep-3. It's a cheap pedal, but it works as it should, and it's held up fine over five years or so of use.

It does!

https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-FC3A-Piano-Sustain-Half-Pedaling/dp/B00VWILIZ0


Says on the Amazon page.

There is nothing in that respect that will help. People have tried various voice-to-text and speech recognition software and universally report that it takes longer to fix or repair all the errors the software makes than it would to just transcribe the audio in the first place.

If you are serious about transcription, it might be worth looking into some hardware that will assist, such as a transcription foot pedal

This m-audio triple pedal unit is supposed to work with just about anything, and people report in the questions section that it does work with p-45.
https://www.amazon.com/M-Audio-SP-Triple-Electronic-Sostenuto-Functions/dp/B01877I1YY

I believe this is what you're looking for: https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-LP7A-3-Pedal-DGX-660-Black/dp/B0029RVWUO/ref=asc_df_B0029RVWUO/?tag=hyprod-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=312039470073&hvpos=1o1&hvnetw=g&hvrand=17649715300495835091&hvpone=&hvptwo=&hvqmt=&hvdev=m&hvdvcmdl=&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=1015348&hvtargid=pla-570120950610&psc=1

This is specifically what I meant. It is so sweet.

https://www.amazon.com/Roland-DP-10-Real-Feel-Non-Slip-Rubber/dp/B000OY0KWA/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1504804017&sr=8-3&keywords=roland+pedal

Do these pedals connect to the Roland FP-30 and would they work? https://www.amazon.com/Roland-Electronic-Keyboard-Footswitch-KPD-70-BK/dp/B01B3BN1AU/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

I don't really know how that would work since the piano is above it on a stand, sorry if that is a silly question.

I may be wrong about the model, but reading the description here:
https://www.amazon.com/Yamaha-FC3A-Piano-Sustain-Half-Pedaling/dp/B00VWILIZ0

It does say:
> Compatible with half-pedaling functions Compatible with half-pedaling functions, so that subtle changes can be made to the level of sustain by varying the degree of pedal applied.

You need to replace the switch with a potentiometer. Electrically quite simple, but the mechanic will kill you. You can get volume pedals starting at $24. Buy one.