Modulation Effects

There are a number of different effects which use modulation to change the sound of a guitar. Modulation effects use a cycling, variable delay time, and the delay time is so short that individual repetitions are not heard. Also, modulation effects often make clever use of the stereo spectrum.

The way in which the sound is processed gives a range of different sounds, and there are a range of parameters associated with each effect which can be adjusted to change certain characteristics of the sound.

In the following, click on the icon to hear an MP3 file of the effect. If you listen to the sound samples in stereo then you should be able to hear how the effects work between the left and right channels to create a more spacious sound.

Chorus

One of the most common modulation effects is chorus. For the first example of this, we'll hear a vintage-style chorus effect being used. This example starts with the 'dry' sound (i.e. no effect) followed by the guitar with the effect added. Finally, we'll hear the same effect with a different the modulation delay setting.

Now we'll hear the same effects again, but using a dirty amp sound. Again, we start with the dry signal, then two examples of different chorus sounds.

Flanger

Another common modulation effect is the flanger, so called as its sound mimics the effect of someone slightly altering the sound of a tape by pressing on the flange of the tape reel. Here are some examples of a clean guitar sound using a flanger effect at different settings.

And, as before, we'll hear the same effect settings using a dirty guitar sound (dry sound first, followed by the effects in use).

Phaser

The other effect which is probably in the top three most common modulation effects is the phaser. This effect combines the original guitar signal with copies of itself out of phase. Let's hear some examples of that effect on a clean guitar sound. We'll start with the dry guitar signal, followed by examples of phaser at different settings.

And now here are the same effects again on a guitar playing on a dirty setting.

Other Modulation Effects

There are a number of other modulation effects, and we'll hear some examples of these now. In all cases these soundbytes are clean/dry, clean/effect, dirty/dry then dirty/effect.

• A tremolo effect modulates the volume up and down
• A panning effect works in stereo, moving the guitar sound between left and right channels in the stereo spectrum
• A pitch shifter takes the original note being played and plays another note at a pre-set interval above or below. A more sophisticated variation of this effect is the harmoniser which act as an intelligent pitch shifter. The particular example here is a harmoniser playing a major 3rd up.

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