According to the internet, April is International Guitar Month. As far as historians can tell, the guitar goes back to 15th century Spain. But it wasn’t until 1987 when the National Association of Music Merchants (NAMM) established April as the month dedicated to a stringed instrument championed by classically trained musicians, juvenile delinquents, and everyone in between.
I fell in love with the guitar in second grade by accident. Near the top of my Christmas list, in between a remote-controlled R2-D2 and a Gremic skateboard, I had asked for the Superstar 3000, a toy guitar that ran on batteries. But upon tearing the wrapping paper off a guitar-shaped box on Christmas morning, I found, to my surprise, a real acoustic guitar instead. My mom was quick to assure me that it was much cooler to play a real guitar than a toy guitar. She also mentioned that she had signed me up for guitar lessons.
Decades later, I really should be a much better guitar player. Sure, I can keep up with most musicians, but not the ones who are so good that they make a weird face when they’re in the zone – you know that face – mouth agape, eyes closed, brows arched. Thankfully, punk and indie rock taught me about distortion and reverb. My lack of six-string skills couldn’t hide behind an acoustic guitar. But with a quiver of electric guitar effect pedals, I could make my mediocre musicianship sound slightly more interesting. Subsequently, my collection of guitar pedals has inspired me to create a series of Pandora Stories that I’ve titled, “The Pandora Pedalboard.” Of course, there are still various pedals that I have yet to cover in this ongoing series. But I hope you enjoy listening to the history of some essential guitar pedals, along with solid examples of what they sound like in certain songs.
Tremolo
For lack of a better description, this is the effect that sounds like someone is turning your volume up and down at varying speeds. There are plenty of awesome tremolo pedals out there. But my favorite version of this effect comes stock within the circuitry of some tube amplifiers, and it’s often mistaken for vibrato. Here’s the difference: when the volume of a musical note is oscillated, that’s tremolo. When the pitch of a musical note is oscillated, that’s vibrato. Think of it like this – “Crimson & Clover” by Tommy James & The Shondells is a great example of the pulsing tremolo effect, while “Rebel Rouser” by Duane Eddy reveals the rounder scope of pitch-shifting vibrato.
Vibrato
Where tremolo has a back-and-forth strobing fidelity, vibrato has a more swirling sound to it, almost like the three-dimensional sensation of hearing a rotating speaker from a Hammond organ. The opening of Led Zeppelin’s “No Quarter” is a perfect example of an electric guitar playing through the vibrato effect.
Flanger
Somewhat similar to the confusion between tremolo and vibrato, a flanger is often confused for a phaser. Think of it this way: a phaser sounds like you’re singing behind an electric fan, where a flanger sounds like you’re singing behind a jet engine. Yes, both kinds of modulations can sound alike, but the flanger is a time-based effect that utilizes a delay process, repeating the modulated and out-of-phase audio signal back onto itself. This creates a swooshing, sweeping effect that sounds a bit more exaggerated than a phaser. Listen to Alex Lifeson’s opening solo on Rush’s “The Spirit Of Radio” for a perfect example of flanger.
Phaser
Like the flanger, a phaser (sometimes spelled phasør) creates a delay-like effect. But this effect is a frequency-based process that alters the phase of a signal. So, it sounds a bit warmer and more enveloping. A lot of 20th century outlaw country guitarists made use of the phaser – most famously, Waylon Jennings. You can hear this immediately from the beginning of “Are You Sure Hank Done It This Way” as he stums his iconic, leather-bound Telecaster through a phaser effect.
Fuzz
Maybe one of the best happy accidents in music, the fuzz effect was born in 1961 when a broken preamp began distorting with an electric buzz that sounded so cool, it was decidedly left in the mix. If you fall down the many online rabbit holes on guitar effects, it seems like fuzz is the most popular one – especially for garage rock, stoner rock, doom, and shoegaze. Ty Segall loves this effect so much, he named one of his bands after it. Although there is a vast array of fuzz box examples in the Pandora catalog, the most iconic is easily the snarling intro riff to “(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction” by the Rolling Stones.
Delay
Whether you’re trying to get that 1950s rockabilly slapback or the shimmering repetition of dream pop guitar, delay is such an important tool of the guitarist’s arsenal, that the Edge from U2 would sound totally different without it. There are many different types of delay, but at its core, this effect was derived from analog tape echo to make your signal sound cavernous and echoed. Its trailing, reptation effects became popular with dub music producers to create ganja-friendly atmospheres. But ethereal guitarists from bands like Cocteau Twins and Slowdive also found ways to give gossamer textures to their respective sounds via the delay effect. I love how the latter band brought delay’s ‘70s dub roots into their ‘90s shoegaze sound with “Souvlaki Space Station.”
Chorus
What is it about the chorus effect that makes everything sound so rooted in the 1980s? Maybe it was the opening chords to Prince’s “Purple Rain” or the creamy sounds of strummed guitar in Cyndi Lauper’s “Time After Time.” It’s hard to describe exactly what chorus does, but let’s try. When we’re talking about chorus in regard to electric guitar, we’re referencing an effect that thickens a sound by multiplying it before modulating and coloring each of the copied sounds so that a single signal comes across like a choir of the same note. Think of it like this – when you hear one chorus-affected guitar strumming on “Vapour Trail” by RIDE, it sounds like more than one guitar.
Wah-Wah
Last, but certainly not least, we must celebrate the pedal that makes everything sound instantly funky. This curious pedal also approximates a human vowel-like voicing by rocking the top of the pedal back and forth with the guitar player’s foot. Like the fuzz effect, wah-wah was born of a happy accident. While an audio engineer was trying to clone the kind of Vox amplifier that the Beatles used, he stumbled upon an effect that sounded somewhat like a trumpet mute. Subsequently, the first Vox wah-wah pedal was released in 1967 – just in time for psychedelic music and acid rock. But the effect really caught on with soul and funk music during the early 1970s. This might be best exemplified with Isaac Hayes’ 1971 recording of the “Theme From Shaft” – a groovy song made even groovier by the bellbottomed boogie of an electric guitar riffing through a frequency-bending wah-wah pedal.
So as of now, our Pandora Pedalboard has eight pedals. This begs the question asked by every guitar pedal nerd – do we have room for more? Welcome to the slippery slope! As we chase down different voicings and effects, it’s also important to remember that if you use too much dressing, you won’t be able to taste the salad. Still, what pedals would you add to this board? Leave a comment! And include an example of your favorite effect as used in a song. Maybe I’ll keep building the board. Because if Kevin Shields from My Bloody Valentine has taught me anything about effects and the slippery slope, you can never have too many pedals.