'sostenuto' pedal and 'una corda' pedal <SOLVED>

[James Sutton]

Hi,

I have searched in vain for a direction-type element for the sostenuto and una corda (soft) piano pedals (viz. Gould p.333). The pedal direction-type seems to be only for notating the sustaining pedal. I notice that they are included in the sound element, but not in the pedal direction-type, or have I missed it?

James Sutton
Dolphin Computing

[Michael Good]

Hi James,

The MusicXML 3.0 pedal element unfortunately does not support the full flexibility of text and line notation for different pedals as described in that Gould reference. That sounds like a great idea for MusicXML 4.0 and I have added it to our list of features to consider in the future.

In MusicXML 3.0 you can get much of the graphical appearance using a combination of the words and bracket elements, and combine it with the sound element for playback. But that doesn't let you semantically encode this as pedal notation, nor capture the pedal change notations directly.

[Hans Vereyken]

Also, look at Gould's Behind Bars page 333. There should be a system to distinguish several pedals at the same time, similar to the number attribute with slurs (and others).

And take a look at page 335-336, but maybe this isn't within the scope of MusicXML (never saw it in other than experimental music)?