User Manual
52 A User’s Guide to Garritan World Instruments
3. Sustain Pedal
(Legato for Sustaining Instruments)
Legato—Playing Smoothly and Evenly
So far, we have focused on aspects of performance that are controlled with your ngers, but an im-
portant part of your performance comes from your foot. Most keyboards include a sustain pedal.
Instruments that can play sustained notes (such as wind instruments) use the sustain pedal to activate
the legato playing techniques. “Legato” literally means connected, and directs the performer to play
smoother transitions between notes instead of accenting each one.
Legato is achieved by holding the sustain pedal down for the desired group of notes. Whenever you
depress the sustain pedal, the attack portion of the sample is removed to create much smoother transi-
tions between notes. As note velocity accents notes to make them sound detached, the legato feature
blends notes into an unbroken seamless musical phrase. To get an idea of what the legato sustain
function does, consider the following illustration. is is what a waveform of a musical phrase may
look like when played on a typical sampler:
Notice how disconnected the notes are. Depressing the sustain pedal removes the attack portion of
the sample and connects the notes for a smoother sounding eect.
In the case of wind instruments, notes are tongued when you have your foot o the sustain pedal.
Slurs between notes occur when you hold down the pedal. For instruments possessing sustain pedals
(pianos), it functions as you would expect.