What kinds of effects are there?

Effects are usually based on some facet of the human ear's abilities to figure out from amplitude and frequency content variations what a sound source is doing. This was critical when the sound source might be a saber toothed tiger. Now it is a means for us to express ourselves musically by directly invoking emotion.

I tried to count up all of the things I could think of that an effect could even possibly be based on. The raw list is stated first, just as a reference, and afterwards I give a short definition of each effect. Since distortion is perhaps the most musically interesting effect to a guitarist, I also include a primer on distortion and an exhausting ...er... exhaustive (to me at least) list of ways to get musically useful distortion in the Distortion 101 section. 

AMPLITUDE BASED EFFECTS    		TIME DELAY EFFECTS
based on the instantaneous loudness	Reverb
of the signal, how it changes, and   	Echo
how quickly it changes.              	True vibrato
                                     	Flanging
Volume control                       	Chorus/ADT
Tremolo                              	Slapback echo
Auto tremolo                         	Reverse echo/reverb
Panning/ping-pong                    	Sampling?
Gating/repeat percussion
Compression                          	OTHER MISCELLANEOUS EFFECTS
Expansion                            	Octave division (octave down)
Asymmetric comp/peak compr.          	Harmony generation
Noise gating                         	Phase lock tracking
Attack delay                         	Noise addition
ADSR                                 	Talk box
Limiting                             	Voice tracking (vocoder)
Auto swell                           	Ring modulation (DSBSC generation)
                                     	SSBSC generation
WAVEFORM DISTORTION EFFECTS
All the generic ways to distort the  	COMMON COMBINATIONS
waveform that comes from the guitar. 	Leslie
                                      	Aphex
Symmetrical clipping                  	Enhancers
Asymmetrical clipping
Infinite limiting                    
Half wave rectification              
Full wave rectification
Arbitrary waveform generation        
                                      
FILTER/FREQUENCY RESPONSE EFFECTS
EQ/tone controls
Treble/mid/bass boost
Cabinet simulation
Resonator
Wah
Auto wah
Tremolo-wah
"vibrato"
Phase shifting
http://www.eden.com/~keen

R.G. Keen keen@eden.com Back to GEO Entry Page