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Reverb
Reverb is an echo effect reminiscent to sound you get when you are overlooking a canyon and can’t resist the urge to shout “hello” and hear it echo back at you. This probably makes reverb one of the first know sound altering effects to man. If you want an example of reverb turn the reverb knob all the way…
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Talk Box
Early forms of the talk box such as the Heil Talk Box (developed in the 1970s) used the guitar amplifier’s output to drive a speaker horn that pushed air into a tube held in the player’s mouth, which filters and thereby shapes the sound leading to a unique effect. The singer/guitarist Peter Frampton made this…
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Vibe
A Vibe or rotary speaker simulator pedal reproduces the sound of a rotating speaker. This is accomplished by synchronizing volume oscillation, frequency-specific volume oscillation, vibrato (pitch wavering), phase shifting, and chorusing in relation to a non-rotating speaker. The modulation speed can be ramped up or down, with separate speeds for the bass and treble frequencies,…
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Hi-Gain
Hi-Gain (descended from the more generic electric guitar amplification term high-gain) is the sound most used in heavy metal. High gain in normal electric guitar playing simply references a thick sound produced by heavily overdriven amplifier tubes, a distortion pedal, or some combination of both–the essential component is the typically loud, thick, harmonically rich, and…
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Fuzz
Fuzz is intended to recreate the classic 1960’s tone of an overdriven tube amp combined with torn speaker cones. Old school guitar players (like Link Wray) would use a screwdriver to poke several holes through the paperboard part of the guitar amp speaker to achieve a similar sound. Some fuzz box pedals include: Z.Vex Fuzz…
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Key Signature
Every song has a key signature. A key signature tells us what originating tone a song is to be performed in. It can either be major or minor.
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Aleatory Music or Chance Music
Aleatory music is an extremely random style of music. The composer and/or the performer will randomly pick musical materials and make it into a piece of music. There are no rules to this form of music, and, thus, any kind of music can be created as a result. After the composer writes a piece in…
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Wah-Wah
A Wah-wah pedal is a foot-operated pedal, technically a kind of band-pass filter, which allows only a small portion of the incoming signal’s frequencies to pass. Rocking the pedal back and forth alternately allows lower and higher frequencies to pass through, the effect being similar to a person saying “wah”. The wah-wah pedal, used with…
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Equalizer
An Equalizer adjusts the frequency response in a number of different frequency bands. A graphic equalizer (or “graphic EQ”) provides slider controls for a number of frequency region. Each of these bands has a fixed width (Q) and a fixed center-frequency, and as such, the slider changes only the level of the frequency band.
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Acrostic Poem
Acrostic– a poem where the first letter of each line spells a word that can be read vertically Below is an example of an acrostic poem: I hope you are having fun. Least that you understand. Or if not, maybe you will see. Valentine’s Day you see a great many of these. Even on other days,…