The Wah Pedal

I'm hesitant to talk about this, because even though I'm a musician, I've tried not to make this a musician's blog; I'm definitely not a gearhead, and don't want this to be a gearhead post.  But one of the things that happens when you play guitar for a while is you notice guitarists, guitar playing, etc.

I know for me, it was a revelation when I could pick out individual guitar parts in a song.  Up until then it had all been this big wash of sound.  But I think most people still recognize a wah-wah pedal, and almost everyone associates it with Jimi Hendrix.

Effects pedals in general are controversial, and seem to fall along the punk/prog party line.  Punks tend to think of most effects as flashy, and flash without substance is their nemesis.  Prog bands, on the other hand, tend to have rigs that look like the central defence computers of middle eastern nations.  Dave Gilmour, especially, tends to have a rig with forty some-odd effects, half of which are echo or delay pedals.

But punks tends to love their distortion pedals, so the arms race continues.



I've been thinking, though, about my favorite uses of various effects.  For example, the classic wah sound is perhaps perfectly illustrated by "White Room" but I love Collective Soul's use of it in "Tremble for my Beloved" - rather than using it as a lead guitar effect, they use it with the rhythm guitar.

I've always been a sucker for a flanger; it adds something to a guitar that just clicks with me, and that's probably why I fell in love with the opening riff to "Honestly" by Zwan.  But the Beatles originally used it as a vocal effect; John Lennon told George Martin that he wanted to sound like he was "singing from the mountain tops".

There are some weird effects out there too; the Smashing Pumpkins (Corgan is just a flat out genius for different guitar sounds) song "Zero" used a harmonizer to make the solo sound like your head turning inside out; it literally adds a note a major or minor third above whatever you're playing, and that can lead to some truly dissonant tones, which is actually the opposite of what was intended.

Some bands let an effect rule their sound; U2 wouldn't know what to do without delay, for example, and effects can be a mixed blessing.  And there are more distortion pedals on the market than seems possible, considering they all sound the same.

When I was in a band, I had an economical approach; I never used effects.  At the time I was playing in a "back to basics" kind of band, and a big effect would have stuck out like a sore thumb.  Instead, I'd play slide guitar.