Explore other audio Effects

There’s almost no end of audio effects that can be applied to guitars, and many other instruments too. Here are a few others that are commonly considered important parts of the rock musician’s arsenal. Written descriptions don’t do justice to them, though, so do try them out in GNU Radio Companion or Audacity.

First up is overdrive and while it might appear to be very similar to fuzz, in that it’s a form of distortion, it’s generally considered to be quite different. As the name suggests, it emulates the effect of driving an amplifier too hard, so it starts to flat-top the waveform. However, it’s not as hard as the clipping in fuzz, so it produces fewer harmonics, and is considered to be a less-aggressive effect.

Next we come to compression and, to put it in technical terms, this effect reduces the dynamic range of the music. In other words, it reduces the range of volumes by cranking up quiet notes while reducing the volume of the louder ones. It’s been described as making music sound smoother, and it’s also been said that it’s an effect you feel more than you hear.

Our last effect is reverb. Putting that in plain English, it mimics the effect of playing in an echoey room, which it does by adding in the original signal, reduced in volume and delayed. In fact, this doesn’t happen just the once, but the delayed signal is added many times before it eventually dies out.