INSTRUMENTAL RESEARCH
Extended Pedal
Rethinking the Body and Resonance of the Piano
Extended Pedal reconsiders the relationship between the performer, the piano body and the damper mechanism. An external and removable extension enables musicians to move around the grand piano and work directly on its strings, frame and soundboard while retaining immediate control of resonance.
Research origins
2019
FRArt project
2021–2023
Status
Ongoing repertoire and prototype development
Supported by the Fonds de la Recherche en Art — FRArt, F.R.S.–FNRS, Belgium.
RESEARCH PREMISE
Resonance Beyond the Keyboard
Contemporary intra-piano practice has considerably expanded the sound world of the grand piano. Performers pluck, strike, rub and prepare its strings, frame and soundboard, often leaving the conventional seated position to explore the instrument from its sides and tail.
Yet the damper pedal remains accessible almost exclusively from the keyboard. When performers move around the piano, they must either block the pedal in a fixed position or entrust it to an assistant. In both cases, the person producing the sound loses direct and nuanced control over its resonance.
THE INSTRUMENTAL PROBLEM
01
Traditional Position
Direct and nuanced pedal control, but limited physical access to the strings and internal body of the piano.
02
Blocked Pedal
The strings remain free to resonate, but damping and reverberation can no longer be articulated during performance.
03
Assistant-Controlled Pedal
Resonance can change, but the performer producing the sound no longer directly controls its duration or expression.
04
A Third Path
Extend the pedal mechanism itself, allowing the performer to move around the instrument while remaining the direct author of the resonance.
A remote action point allows the performer to control the dampers while working away from the keyboard.
FROM PROTOTYPE TO INSTRUMENT
Developing a New Access to Resonance
The project developed through successive experiments connecting an instrumental need, mechanical design, performer testing and composition. The mechanism evolved from an initial prototype into a removable and distributed tool adaptable to different grand pianos.
First extended-pedal prototype, developed to test remote mechanical control of the piano dampers.
EARLY DEVELOPMENT
The First Prototype
The first prototype was developed to test whether pedal control could be transferred beyond the traditional keyboard position. Its experimental mechanical structure established the central principle of the research: enabling a performer positioned around the piano to retain direct control of the dampers and resonance.
The prototype was first explored through Un eco di soffio II, in which a clarinettist projects sound towards the open piano and activates its strings through sympathetic vibration. The performer can then shape the emergence, duration and disappearance of the resulting resonance directly.
DEVELOPED SYSTEM
Extending Access Around the Piano
The developed system distributes several pedal-access points around the grand piano. Performers can approach the strings, frame, soundboard and outer structure from positions that would normally make pedal control impossible.
The mechanism is external, removable and adaptable. It is attached without permanent alteration to the instrument and can be installed as a playable tool rather than as a fixed reconstruction of the piano.
The developed system distributes mechanical control around several sides of the grand piano.
The extended mechanism remains connected to the traditional pedal system while providing access from outside the keyboard position.
An External Graft
The extension acts directly on the existing pedal mechanism. Rather than replacing the traditional pedal or rebuilding the piano, it transfers its action through a distributed mechanical structure.
This approach preserves the identity and acoustic properties of the original instrument while opening new positions, gestures and modes of resonance control.
OBJECT STUDY
The Extended Pedal in Motion
A close study of the mechanism reveals its distributed structure, its different points of access and its physical relationship with the traditional pedal system. Conceived as an external graft, the device extends control around the piano without modifying its original construction.
Panoramic study of the extended-pedal mechanism in a darkened performance environment.
COLLABORATIVE DEVELOPMENT
Composition, Construction and Performance
The extended pedal was developed through collaboration between composer Martin Loridan, piano maker and technician Gaëtan Leclef, and performers with different instrumental backgrounds.
Pianists, a percussionist and clarinettists tested the device through improvisation, rehearsal and composition. Their experience informed the system’s precision, elasticity, weight, comfort and distribution around the instrument.
instrumental problem
→ prototype design
→ performer testing
→ composition
→ revision
Performer testing transformed the prototype into a shared compositional and instrumental tool.
FUNCTIONALITIES AND APPLICATIONS
One Mechanism, Multiple Instrumental Situations
The extended pedal is not associated with a single playing technique. By redistributing damper control around the piano, it supports contrasting instrumental situations: percussive activation, shared control, sympathetic resonance, prepared-piano techniques and feedback processes.
Each application reveals a progressively more complex relationship between physical action, movement and the resonating body of the instrument.
Tom De Cock demonstrates the relationship between percussive activation, movement and direct control of the piano’s resonance.
01
Percussive Activation
With the extended pedal, a percussionist can work directly on the strings, frame, soundboard and outer body of the piano while retaining immediate control of the resulting resonance.
Impacts are no longer separated from their reverberation: attack, damping, resonance and movement become parts of a single performative gesture.
02
Distributed and Double Control
The extension can be duplicated to create several access points around the piano. Two performers may control the same damper mechanism from different positions, independently or through shared pressure.
Resonance becomes a collective and tactile parameter, connecting gestures performed at opposite sides of the instrument. Each performer can physically perceive the actions of the other through the shared movement of the mechanism.
Double control distributes access to the damper mechanism and enables resonance to be articulated collectively.
Direct control of sympathetic resonance generated by an external instrumental source.
03
Controlled Sympathetic Resonance
Sound projected towards the open piano can activate its strings through sympathetic vibration. The extended pedal allows the external performer to control the emergence, duration and disappearance of this secondary resonance directly, without relying on an assistant positioned at the keyboard.
The piano becomes an extended resonating body for another instrument. Direction, distance, register and damper position determine how the projected sound is filtered, amplified and transformed by the strings.
04
Prepared Piano and Feedback
The extended pedal can articulate the resonance of prepared strings and amplified feedback processes. By continuously modifying the position of the dampers, the performer shapes the duration, colour and instability of sounds generated inside the piano.
Acoustic preparations, internal diffusion and controlled feedback merge within the piano body. The instrument becomes simultaneously a resonator, a filter and an acoustic processor.
Prepared strings, damper control and internal amplification transform the piano into a resonating processor.
INSTRUMENTAL SPACE
A Piano Played From Within
The extended pedal transforms the grand piano into a shared instrumental space. Performers occupy different positions around and inside the instrument, combining direct action on strings, frame and soundboard with continuous control of resonance. Gesture, movement and spatial position become compositional parameters.
Mobile intra-piano performance with the extended pedal: gesture, position and resonance become part of a single instrumental situation.
ORIGINAL REPERTOIRE
The Reverberated Series
Four works were developed through the research, each testing a distinct instrumental situation and relationship to resonance.
LISTEN
Extended Pedal Project Works
Listen to the works developed through the extended-pedal research. Each composition explores a different relationship between intra-piano gesture, damper control, mobility, sympathetic vibration and active amplification.
RESEARCH OUTCOMES
From Instrumental Problem to Transferable Research Tool
Extended Pedal has produced outcomes across instrument design, performance practice, composition and artistic-research dissemination. The project resulted not only in a functional mechanism and an original repertoire, but also in a transferable tool subsequently adopted by other composers.
01
Instrument
A removable and adaptable mechanism extending damper control to different positions around the grand piano.
02
Performance
New modes of intra-piano performance in which musicians can move around the strings, frame and soundboard without abandoning direct and nuanced control of resonance.
03
Shared Control
Distributed and double action points enabling resonance to become a collective and tactile parameter shared by several performers.
04
Original Repertoire
Four works developed through collaboration with pianists, a percussionist and clarinettists: Reverberated Impacts, Reverberated Grain, Reverberated Feedbacks and Reverberated Breath.
05
Dissemination
Concerts, premieres, recording sessions, public demonstrations, an Ars Musica conference, online documentation and a bilingual publication in the artistic-research journal A/R.
IMPACT AND NEW REPERTOIRE
A Device Taken Up by Other Composers
The impact of the extended pedal extends beyond the works for which it was originally developed. Its adoption by other composers demonstrates that the mechanism can function as a transferable research instrument, capable of supporting independent musical languages and generating an expanding repertoire.
In 2024, two new works created at Festival Mosaïques explored the possibilities of the extended pedal from perspectives outside Martin Loridan’s original research corpus.
MAGDALENA BIAŁECKA
Résonances de Loin
2024
Created at Festival Mosaïques
Brussels, Belgium
Résonances de Loin is one of the first works by another composer to integrate the extended-pedal system. Its creation demonstrates how the mechanism can be transferred beyond its original repertoire and reinterpreted through an independent compositional approach to resonance and the extended piano.
NINA SINIAKOVA
Echoes of Sands
2024
Created at Festival Mosaïques
Brussels, Belgium
Echoes of Sands develops another independent approach to the extended pedal and the resonating piano. Its inclusion in the Festival Mosaïques programme further demonstrates the adaptability of the mechanism and its ability to support new compositional practices outside the initial research team.
06
Further Research
The mechanical relocation of damper control opened a further field of enquiry: the active amplification and controlled activation of acoustic instrumental bodies. This development leads towards the continuing Organic Augmented Instruments research project.
PERFORMANCES AND DISSEMINATION
From First Prototype to an Expanding Repertoire
The extended pedal developed through successive prototypes, performances, recording sessions, public demonstrations and new compositions.
2019
First prototype developed and publicly explored through Un eco di soffio II.
2022
First public presentation of the developed system and premieres of Reverberated Grain and Reverberated Impacts.
2023
Final FRArt presentation bringing together the four-work Reverberated corpus.
2024
New Festival Mosaïques performances and works created by other composers.
DOCUMENTATION
Conference, Publication and Project Archives
ARS MUSICA — 2022
Extended Pedal: Rethinking Intra-Piano
A conference-concert presenting the origins, construction and compositional applications of the extended pedal, and the relationships it creates between performer, mechanism, movement, resonance and the body of the piano.
Musée des instruments de musique, Brussels — 26 November 2022
A/R — 2023
Rethinking the Body and Resonance of the Piano
Martin Loridan
“Repenser le corps du piano et sa vibration : pédale étendue pour un nouveau jeu intra-piano”
A/R — revue de recherche artistique, 2023
French: pp. 65–73 · English: pp. 121–124
This extended publication traces the origins of the research, the limitations of conventional intra-piano practice, the construction of the prototype and its development through collaboration with a piano maker and performers.
It also examines the gestural, spatial and compositional consequences of treating the piano as an open instrumental body rather than as an instrument approached exclusively from the keyboard.
A/R — Art Recherche
Extended Pedal Research Project
Project documentation and institutional information published in the A/R artistic-research database.
Royal Conservatoire of Brussels
First Public Demonstration — 2022
Institutional presentation of the mechanism and the first works developed through the FRArt project.
Royal Conservatoire of Brussels
Final FRArt Presentation — 2023
Final research presentation bringing together the four works developed through the project.
Video Archive
Extended Pedal Video Archive
Performances, demonstrations and documentation of the different functions and applications of the mechanism.
CONTINUING RESEARCH
From Resonance Control to Instrumental Activation
Extended Pedal began by relocating mechanical control of the piano’s dampers. Its applications gradually raised another question: could the acoustic body of an instrument itself become an active surface for amplification, transformation and diffusion?
This question leads towards Organic Augmented Instruments, a continuing research project devoted to external, removable and non-invasive active-amplification systems.
Souffle
Air and Breath as Compositional Material
Explore the research into tactility, resonance, energy and multiplicity.
Organic Augmented Instruments
External Active Amplification for Acoustic Instruments
Explore the continuing research into reversible instrumental activation.