Guitar Effects For Beginners

What do Jim Hendrix's sound is easily recognizable by Carlos Santana? How you can easily see metal from funk, even if we say metal player and funk player plays the same song (very unlikely, but bear with me here)? The answer: Guitarists use effects to color their sound and give it a kind of modification to suit the type involved music. 

Normally, these effects are placed separately in small effects pedals, or in multi-effects hardware or built-in amplifiers, or simulated in computer software. They can be used by themselves or you can turn on combinations of effects to get a certain sound. Let us try to identify the types of guitar effects available, so you know which one is perfect to achieve the sound you want. 

Distortion effects are popular genres such as rock, metal, etc. This is what causes the heavy, rough, raw sound you hear in these genres. Distortion effects can be categorized as overdrive / distortion (this is the raw sound familiar), Fuzz (which used to copy the sound of a vibrating torn speaker - so is "fuzzy"), and high-gain (the thick, loud, "chugging" sound used in heavy metal). Almost all rock bands have these as a given, and is a good initial investment. 

Filtering effects are effects that shape the sound by enhancing or minimizing certain frequencies. Here you can find equalizers (similar to how normal equalizers work), and wash (a foot pedal, allowing through successively higher or lower frequencies by rocking the pedal). The wash pedal got its name because it emulates a person says, a long "wash" when the game (the lower frequencies are "w" and the high frequencies are "ah" part). You can hear most of funky grooves. 

Volume effects are just that they change the volume in different ways. Examples of these are volume pedals (these are just volume controls in the form of a pedal that you can rock back and forth), tremolo (which used to copy the sound of a volume knob, turning up and down rapidly, that tone “swings ") and compressors (used to maintain a certain volume level as the signal becomes higher). 

Time-based effects are an audio signal, and copy it makes a kind of echo sound. Delay pedals can change the delay between the original sound and dubbed audio, up to very long delay times with a rolling echo-like sound (a remarkable use of delay effects is U2's The Edge). Reverb pedals, however, copy the sound is produced in a large room where little resonance pile up and decay quickly. Apart from distortion effects, these are also popular and can be an important part of your setup. 

Modulation effects are effects that actually change how the audio sounds. Examples of these are phase shift (which makes a kind of whirring sound by copying the original signal and then put it out of phase regularly), flanges (which creates a sort of acceleration or deceleration sound), chorus pedals (copying the sound of several guitarists playing at same time), and rotating speakers (copying the sound of a signal passing through the rotary speaker, making a sort of wavy pitch-shifting effect). These types of effects used to create these experiments, space-age sounds. 

Pitch Shifters change the pitch of a signal, and then combines it with the original sound, so it sounds like two guitars blend together in harmony. It can even be used as a bass, if you put it an octave lower than normal, or produce a video-game-like sound, if there is an octave higher. 

You can experiment with combinations of pedals and connect them in chains to find out what type of sound you want to create. After some time you can hear the effects that were used in your favorite songs, and hopefully this article can help you on your way to creating your own audio and add new layers to your musical adventure.