Painting The Air: Beginner’s Guide to Effects Pedals

Painting Wheel: Introduction

Effects pedals will alter the sounds you can get off your guitar. Pedals are sort of like texture painting. Many different effects pedals exist out there. From reverb, phase shifter, chorus, wah wah, to all those in between.

Basically, effects pedals (stomp boxes) are small effects units within metal or plastic boxes. Guitarists usually use them, though, keyboardists and bass plays also utilize their colorful possibilities. Effects can swallow your guitar or add detailed subtle nuances. These devices are designated as pedals because they sit on the floor and have an off switch you tape with your foot. Various knobs control the effects intensities. Stomp boxes allow the player to stop and start the pedals as they’re playing.

Phase Shifter Effects Pedal

A phase shifter creates a whooshing sound like a jet whooshing in the sky. The pedal creates regular spaced notches as the frequency goes in to create copies of the frequency which pairs in and out of sync with itself. Phase shifters were once very common in the 1970s as electric pianos used them in great effect. The band the Chemical Brothers uses such a pedal extensively. Funk bass guitar also has used it. Post punk pioneers Chrome also used this in their songs. Different phase shifters have different stage amounts, basically the number of moving dips in a frequency’s response curve. This may sound complicated so imagine this. Phase makes the notes seemingly shift higher and lower.

Watery Chorus

Chorus stomp box processes frequencies with a variable cycling delay. “Come As You Are” by Nirvana uses lots of chorus. The pedal makes the incoming sounds seem like they’re overlapping each other while simultaneously thickening the sound.

Wah Wah Pedal

One of the most well known effects boxes, wah wah has been best popularized by Jimi Hendrix. A wah works because it only allows parts of the incoming guitar frequencies to come through, sort of like a filtering system. If one presses the pedal down and up while playing, frequencies low and high come out of the amp. People when making this pedal thought the effect sounded like a person saying wah!

Talk Box Effects Pedal

This pedal is probably one of the most heard but one of the least used today. Amazingly, this effects pedal dates all the way back to 1940s country music with pedal steel players! You may know it best through that Peter Frampton song played 1,000 times a day on any classic rock station. The guitar takes the guitar’s output to drive a speaker horn effect from a speaker in the player’s mouth through an air tight plastic tube to the effects pedal. Modification is changed by mouth shape.

Compressor Stomp

This pedal effect simply controls volume, decreasing out put levels as signals increase. The effect preserves a note’s ferocity without silencing it. This pedal also can be utilized to curb the behavior of other pedals, most notably distortion effects. Characteristically, compressor effects pedals also create greater sustain.

Delay/Echo Effects

These effect pedals solely are time based, with some similarities with phase shifters. A delay/echo pedal copies incoming sounds then delays those sounds. Settings allow duration variations. Time based effects pedals actually started off using magnetic tape! Delay often uses a slap (usually single repetition) while echo uses multiple delayed repetitions. Analog delays are less flexible then digital counterparts yet some claim as always, analog has a warmer nature.

Looping Effects Pedals

An effects pedal that takes delay/echo a step further are looping pedals. This pedal allows the player to record passages and phrases, then replay those while playing along with what was recorded. Often, these pedals allow overdub, sometimes up to an hour’s worth of memory and even reverse functions. One can enact all sorts of craziness with these, to the point of being a one man band!

Reverb Effects

Persistence of a sound after the original source has disappeared summarizes reverb. Sound builds echoes in large spaces till the walls and air absorb the sound causing decay. Analog reverb in pedal form is not used as much, while digital with more flexibility uses a concept called digital signal processing. Just think of rockabilly or Phil Spector and you’ll know what reverb sounds like.

Other Effects Pedals

Flanger pedal simulates the sound of tape slowing down, then suddenly speeding up again, while also being similar the chorus. Eddie Van Halen and old sci-fi movies used this effect. A pitch shifter does what one would think. It bends the incoming notes.

Concluding

This brief overview should help in the beginner’s curiosity about effects pedals. Reviewing this list, you can decide what textures you want to start painting your notes all sorts of wild colors!

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