Guitar F/X Licks - Wah Wah

This week's guitar effects topic is the wah-wah pedal and related envelope-modifying devices.  The wah-wah acts as a variable tone filter, essentially a tone pot, controlled by the back-and-forth motion of the foot on a mechanical pedal.  The Crybaby was a popular brand in the 1960s, as was the early Vox wa-wa marketed in England.  Eric Clapton, Jimi Hendrix, Jeff Beck, and Jimmy Page are among the first prominent players to utilize the wah-wah pedal in their music.  

Today's lick is an example of arguably the most recognizable and characteristic use of the wah-wah pedal.  This involves rocking the pedal in time with the music to shape the individual notes of a melody. In this phrase the melody is a simple line moving in quarter-note rhythm with a driving rock background groove.  Each melody note receives a down-up stroke of the pedal emphasizing the pulse of the rhythm figure.  Our lick is in D minor, and contains a stepwise melody colored with vibrato.  The lick was played on a Gibson ES-335 and a Crybaby wah-wah pedal plugged into a Soldano SLO-100 head and a vintage Marshall 4x12 cabinet.

Learn this lick and then practice to