Six Guitar Effects Every Guitarist Should Know—with Songs and Tab

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Six crucial guitar effects, their history and how best to apply them.

As much as guitarists love the pure tone of a great electric guitar, we also like to enhance our instrument’s tone with external effects.

In this video, “Six Guitar Effects You Should Know,” Paul Davids showcases six favorite effects of guitarists everywhere. He talks about the history of the effects and how to apply them, and he performs excerpts of songs that feature the effects, while providing tab, so you can learn them and play along.

The effects and their accompany songs include tremolo (the Nancy Sinatra Sixties classic “Bang Bang”), delay (Buckethead’s “Whitewash”), wah (Dream Theater’s “Home”), the Whammy Pedal (Tom Morello’s “Killing in the Name” solo), chorus (Prince’s “Purple Rain”) and rotary (Stevie Ray Vaughan’s “Cold Shot”).

Take a look, and check out Paul’s YouTube channel for more of his videos.

Christopher Scapelliti
Christopher Scapelliti

Christopher Scapelliti is editor-in-chief of Guitar Player magazine, the world’s longest-running guitar magazine, founded in 1967. In his extensive career, he has authored in-depth interviews with such guitarists as Pete Townshend, Slash, Billy Corgan, Jack White, Elvis Costello and Todd Rundgren, and audio professionals including Beatles engineers Geoff Emerick and Ken Scott. He is the co-author of Guitar Aficionado: The Collections: The Most Famous, Rare, and Valuable Guitars in the World, a founding editor of Guitar Aficionado magazine, and a former editor with Guitar World, Guitar for the Practicing Musician and Maximum Guitar. Apart from guitars, he maintains a collection of more than 30 vintage analog synthesizers.