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The pedals: on the organ, the pedalboard played by the feet (Pedals labels its line); on the piano, the damper and soft pedals; on the harp, the seven tuning pedals.
In organ music Pedals (or Ped.) labels the pedal staff or marks where the feet take a line; in piano music it appears in directions such as with both pedals; in harp parts the pedal settings are given as a diagram or note names at the start and before each change.
Know which instrument you are writing for: organ pedals are a bass keyboard played by the feet, ideal for sustained lines and slow-moving foundations; piano pedals change resonance and colour; harp pedals set the tuning of each string and must move before a chromatic note sounds. Keep organ pedal lines simpler than manual parts, and give a harpist time for pedal changes.
Holst, The Planets, organ part: “Pedals”, marking the line the organist plays on the pedalboard, at ff.
Pedals is one of 1755 terms in the Gradus musical dictionary: the words, abbreviations and instrument names that appear in printed scores, plus the vocabulary composers use to talk about them.
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