The Wah Wah effect was made popular during the sixties by bands such as Cream. The Wah Wah effect is activated by the guitarist's foot (by rocking the effect pedal), and alters the tone of the sound (going from low treble to high treble) - this creates a voice-like wah-wah-wah effect. New digital wah wah effects devices also have "Auto Wah", in which no pedal pressing is required - the computer in the device automatically varies the sound for you. Some popular rock songs use a wah wah pedal, but it is kept stationary in halfway position - this makes a unique funky sound. Many other effects are also available; such as producing an acoustic guitar sound from an electric guitar pickups, signal duplication (sounds like two guitars are playing), rotating speaker modelling (mimics rotating cone speakers used by some musicians), and many more effects.

Electric Guitar Types<<<Previous

The Guitar is a fretted stringed musical instrument that has been around in some form or the other for over 5000 years, from the ancient Cithara, to the more recent ministrel's Lute.

Most modern music consists of three main elements; lead, rhythm, and bass. Bass is often provided by drums (the beat), and also can be played by a bass guitar that has 4 strings (but we are not going to discuss bass guitars at all). Lead is usually provided by vocals (the singing) and often also with a lead guitar (although, any musical intrument can be used to play lead). Rhythm is best described as the background music that rhythmatically establishes the "sound" of that particular piece of music, and is often provided by a rythm guitar and/or a piano (keyboard). If you examine your favorite music group or band, at the very least you will find a drummer and a bass guitar player providing bass; a piano/keyboard player and a rhythm guitarist for rhythm; and a singer and lead guitarist for lead. When one plays music alone, you really can't have that band sound (unless you're Dick Van Dyke in Mary Poppins). Mostly, we sacrifice the bass and just sing for lead and strum the guitar (or pound on a piano) for rhythm.

There are numerous variations of guitars. One of the most popular is the twelve string guitar. As the name suggests, the 12 string guitar has 12 strings instead of the usual six. Each of the traditional strings is paired with a duplicate string, so it sounds as though two guitars are being played simultenously. Another popular variant is the archtop guitar, which is has a curved top piece (instead of the normal flattop as normal acoustic guitars have), and an f shaped sound hole (instead of the normal round sound hole seen in normal acoustic guitars). Archtop guitars have a distinctive tone and a louder sound than traditional acoustic guitars.

The Dobro guitar or Resonator guitar has a metal resonator cone instead of a sound hole, this produces a funky metallic tone often seen in country music. Some Dobro guitars have necks with a square cross section (square necks) and very large frets, these are played with the instrument flat on your lap, with a glass or metal slide and are often called Slide guitars. There are also acoustic and electric guitar variants with 7 strings instead of the usual six, called Seven string guitars. The next pages have more detailed information on Acoustic Guitar Parts and Electric Guitar Parts; followed by suggestions on choosing to learn on an Acoustic or Electric Guitar.

Guitar Homepage<<<Previous