Arpeggiation to simulate piano pedal

[stickista]

if you’re doing an arpeggiation (eg an A minor arpeggio of A,C,G,A,C) is there a common technique that best simulates the use of a piano pedal to feel like the notes are ringing through rather than being held to build a chord?
Something like only leaving the immediately preceding note depressed so that any note and its predecessor are ever actually sounding at once… triads only, and the illusion of sustain is in the listener’s head?
Or are there other approaches?

 

[Ventura]

you want the electronic equivalent of the Sostenuto pedal
as it exists in professional Grand Piano's

some keyboards can emulate this, so look in your owners manual
and see if the sustain pedal function is assignable to variations,
if not you might need to research for a new keyboard that
supports Sostenuto

 

[stickista]

I’m actually talking about approximating the effect on a traditional accordion

 

[Ben-jammin]

Having a foot switch to turn on a lot of reverb might be the best approximation. A purely acoustic approach might be to is to play the arpeggios with your hand spaced so you can play two octaves of the “current” note but only play one octave of the preceding note. That would better approximate the decay of the preceding note.

 

[debra]

if you’re doing an arpeggiation (eg an A minor arpeggio of A,C,G,A,C) is there a common technique that best simulates the use of a piano pedal to feel like the notes are ringing through rather than being held to build a chord?
Something like only leaving the immediately preceding note depressed so that any note and its predecessor are ever actually sounding at once… triads only, and the illusion of sustain is in the listener’s head?
Or are there other approaches?

You can simulate the effect to a limited extent by playing an arpeggio chord with the technique of playing and releasing notes in sequence. It is quite difficult to do. You play for instance C-E-G-C by pressing the notes in sequence, and releasing them in the same sequence, preferably at a slower rate. You can also play a melody like this. Like in a prelude by Bach that goes C E G c e G c e (and then again). You start releasing the notes 2 notes after you pressed them. So you play C E G without releasing and then as you play the next (higher) c you release the first C, and when you press e you release the lower E, etc. This is really hard to do, but it does sort-of give the effect you want if you do it right.

 

[JerryPH]

I’m actually talking about approximating the effect on a traditional accordion

The effect can be completed about as easily as you can adjust the bellows on a piano... lol

Ideally, you can TRY to simulate it in the manner above, the way that Paul explains it, but you cannot ever make a free reed instrument sound like a string instrument. On a Piano, you can stike the keys, let go, and the sound continues. On an accordion you hit the keys and the instant the reeds no longer get air (ie: the moment you let go), there is no sound.

One could push the analog sound out to an amp and get some reverb in it, but again, thats not really like a piano. Using this method you have reverb for everything that you play without exception.