The 8 Most Popular Sound Effects For Guitarists
Creative use of guitar effects can be a great way to enhance your music. The trick is to make sure your musical ideas are strong before you start reaching for an sound effect to save the day. The most common phrase heard around the recording studio by newbie band members is, “It’s okay. We’ll fix it in the mix.” Nothing could be further from the truth.
If something is out of time or out of tune it can’t be fixed in the mix. In fact, the better the recording facilities the more obvious the musical problem will become.
That said, choosing the best sound effect to suit your musical situation is an important decision. Everyday an endless parade of “new” effect units pass before the prospective buyer’s eyes and ears — each promising to be just the thing to blast them off to musical success.
The truth is, despite all kinds of fancy packaging, there are only a handful of useful guitar effects. It is quite common for a guitarist to be seduced into buying an effect unit with 1001 sounds only to find the player struggling to find two or three decent usable sounds.
The in-store demo will sound fantastic but how will it work on the gig? How often do you need the “earthquake” or “underwater” sound? It might be fun to play to your friends but you’re wise to save your money for the “bread and butter” sounds.
Here is an overview of the seven most basic and useful effects that all professional guitarists carry with them.
Guitar sound effect 1: Reverb.
Every recording of a guitar has this effect as an essential part of the guitar sound. How much of the effect used will depend on the style of music. For example, jazz players generally prefer to use only the slightest amount of reverb whereas a “surf” style guitar group such as the Shadows or Ventures will use lots of reverb to create their sound.
The effect is designed to simulate playing your guitar in various size rooms with different room dimensions and floor/wall/ceiling textures.
Reverb became an essential part of the recording engineer’s sonic toolbox when the studios started to get serious about soundproofing. The recording booth was carpeted – the walls, floors and ceilings. All the sounds were recording “dry” or “flat” without any natural acoustics and reverb was added later to give more natural sound and simulate a particular venue.
Guitar sound effect 2: Distortion / Overdrive.
This effect is the basic sound of rock, metal and country rock music and can also
be heard in jazz fusion music.
Some guitar effect companies market their product as an “overdrive” effect while others sell their units as “distortion”. The term overdrive is possibly the best way to get your head around what this effect does.
In the early days of rock and roll as the venues became bigger the small guitar amps could not handle the required volumes. As guitarists ran their amps higher and higher “into the red” their amps when into overdrive creating a distorted guitar sound just before the amp stopped working. This is where the more experienced groups had a roadie run on stage with a new amp.
Long story short, the distorted sound became very popular and so the guitar effects people developed ways of overdriving the guitar sound without blowing up the amp.
Guitar sound effect 3: Chorus.
This is a great effect for a clean guitar sound where you want to create a full, rich, twelve string type of sound. Chorus is a neat effect for both electric and acoustic guitar. This effect also sounds good used in conjunction with distortion. Just place the chorus after the distortion in your effects chain.
Guitar sound effect 4: Wah-Wah.
If you are a Jimi Hendrix fan you will know this sound. Jimi made this effect popular and guitarists all over the world have been discovering and rediscovering this sound year in and year out. Listen to ‘Shaft’ by Isaac Hayes for some fine wah-wah playing!
Guitar sound effect 5: Echo.
Rockabilly guitar players need this effect to get their sound. The echo effect is similar to reverb in that it simulates certain size acoustic situations. The difference is that you can set the exact amount of delay time a note is played back in milliseconds from a single ‘slap back’ echo to multiple delayed echoes. Listen to recordings by guitarist Les Paul to hear the echo effect.
Guitar sound effect 6: Tremolo.
Although it is not an essential effect, tremolo is important for certain 70′s type guitar sounds and comes standard on certain guitar amps such as Fender’s “Twin Reverb” amp. The effect creates a variable modulating sound that works well in songs like “Born On The Bayou” and “Run Through The Jungle” by CCR.
Guitar sound effect 7: Compression.
The idea behind compression is to “contain” the dynamics of a performance. Compression allows the guitarist or recording engineer to set a cut-off point where no matter how hard or soft the player picks a note or chord the compression will not allow the musical performance to go beyond the defined settings. Compression is used extensively in all pop and rock music and to a much lesser degree in jazz and classical music.
Guitar sound effect 8: Noise Reduction.
I thought I’d also include this neat effect. It will give you the professional’s edge to you sound. Use it last in your guitar effect chain to clean up unwanted noise from all your units. Hush is the brand name of an excellent noise reduction unit.
Well, these are the basic effects. I recommend testing all different combinations and brands of guitar effects to help you find your unique sound on guitar.
Mike Hayes is a guitar teacher, author, performing musician and session guitarist with over 30 years of professional experience. Find out more about how to learn guitar fast with his popular FREE e-course
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