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The Most Popular Sound Effects For Guitars

By Mike Hayes | March 23, 2010

Creative use of guitar effects can be a great way to enhance your
music, the trick is to make sure your musical ideas are strong
before you start reaching for an sound effect to save the day.

The most common phrase heard around the recording studio by
newbie band members is ‘it’s o.k… we’ll fix it in the mix’;
nothing could be further from the truth, if something is out of
time or out of tune it’s can’t be fixed in the mix in fact the
better the recording facilities the more obvious the musical
problem will become.

That said, choosing the best sound effect to suit your musical
situation is an important decision, everyday an endless parade
of ‘new’ effect units past before the perspective buyers eyes and
ears each promising to be just the thing to blast you off to
musical success.

The truth is despite all kinds of fancy packaging there’s only a
handful of useful guitar effects; it’s quite common for a
guitarist to be seduced into buying an effect unit with 1001
sounds only to find the player struggling to find two or three
decent usable sounds.

The in store demo will sound fantastic but how will it work on
the gig? How often do you need the ‘earthquake’ or ‘underwater’
sound? It might be fun to play to your friends but you’re wise to
save your money for the ‘bread and butter’ sounds.

Here is an overview of the seven most basic and useful effects
that all professional guitarists carry with them.

Guitar sound effect #1: Reverb – Every recording of a guitar has
this effect as an essential part of the guitar sound; how much of
the effect used will depend on the style of music i.e., jazz
players generally prefer to use only the slightest amount of
reverb whereas a ’surf’ style guitar group such as the Shadows or
Ventures will use lots of reverb to create their sound.

The effect is designed to simulate playing your guitar in various
size rooms with different room dimensions and floor/wall/ ceiling
textures i.e., a room with a wooden floor.

Reverb became an essential part of the recording engineers sonic
toolbox when the studios started to get serious about
soundproofing, everything was carpeted … the walls, floors and
ceilings of the recording booths was covered with carpet.

All the sounds were recording ‘dry’ or ‘flat’ without any natural
acoustics then reverb was added later to the ‘dry’ recorded sound
to give a more natural sound and simulate a particular venue.

Guitar sound effect #2: Distortion / overdrive – This effect is
the basic sound of rock, metal and country rock music it can also
be heard in jazz fusion music.

Some guitar effect companies market their product as an
‘overdrive’ effect while others sell their units as ‘distortion’.
The term overdrive is possibly the best way to get your head
around what this effect does.

In the early days of rock and roll as the venues became bigger
the small guitar amps could not handle the required volumes as
the guitarist’s ran their amps higher and higher ‘into the red’
their amps when into overdrive creating a distorted guitar sound,
just before the amp stopped working; this is where the more
experienced groups had a roadie run on stage with a new amp.

Long story short … the distorted sound became very popular and
so the guitar effects people developed ways of overdriving the
guitar sound without blowing up the amp.

Guitar sound effect #3: Chorus – Great effect for a clean guitar
sound where you want to create a full, rich, twelve string guitar
type of sound. Chorus is a neat effect for both electric and
acoustic guitar. This effect also sounds good used in conjunction
with distortion, just place the chorus after the distortion in
your effects chain.

Guitar sound effect #4: Wah-Wah – If you are a Jimi Hendrix fan
you will know this sound, Jimi made this effect popular and
guitarist’s all over the world have been discovering and re-
discovering this sound year in year out.

Listen to ‘Shaft’ by Isaac Hayes for some fine wah-wah playing!

Guitar sound effect #5: Echo – Rockabilly guitar players need
this effect to get their sound. The echo effect is similar to
reverb in that it simulates certain size acoustic situations only
you can set the exact amount of delay time a note is played back
in milliseconds from a single ’slap back’ echo to multiple
delayed echoes.

Listen to recordings by guitarist Les Paul to hear the echo
effect.

Guitar sound effect #6: Tremolo – Although not an essential
effect tremolo is important for certain 70’s type guitar sounds
and comes standard on certain guitar amps such as Fender’s ‘Twin
Reverb’amp.

The effect creates a variable modulating sound that works well in
songs like “Born On The Bayou” and “Run Through The Jungle” by
Creedence.

Guitar sound effect #7: Compression – The idea behind compression
is to ‘contain’ the dynamics of a performance. Compression allows
the guitarist or recording engineer to set a cut-off point
whereby no matter how hard or soft the player picks a note or
chord the compression will not allow the musical performance to
go beyond the defined settings.

Compression is used extensively in all pop and rock music and to
a much lesser degree in jazz and classical music.

Hush – noise reduction – ‘Hush’ is the brand name of an
excellent noise reduction unit.

I thought I’d also include this neat effect, it will give you the
professional’s edge to you sound; use it last in your guitar
effect chain to clean up unwanted noise from all your units.

Well that the basic effects … I recommend testing all different
combinations and brands of guitar effects to help you find your
unique sound on guitar.

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