Wah-wah pedalA wah-wah pedal, or simply wah pedal, is a type of electric guitar effects pedal that alters the tone and frequencies of the guitar signal to create a distinctive sound, mimicking the human voice saying the onomatopoeic name "wah-wah". The pedal sweeps the peak response of a frequency filter up and down in frequency to create the sound, a spectral glide, also known as "the wah effect". The wah-wah effect originated in the 1920s, with trumpet or trombone players finding they could produce an expressive crying tone by moving a mute in and out of the instrument's bell.
Expression pedalAn expression pedal is an important control found on many musical instruments including organs, electronic keyboards, and pedal steel guitar. The musician uses the pedal to control different aspects of the sound, commonly volume. Separate expression pedals can often be added to a guitar amplifier or effects unit and used to control many different aspects of the tone. Because the source of power with a pipe organ and electronic organs is not generated by the organist, the volume of these instruments has no relationship with how hard its keys or pedals are struck; i.
NovachordThe Novachord is an electronic musical instrument often considered the world's first commercial polyphonic synthesizer. Incorporating many circuit and control elements found in modern synthesizers, and using subtractive synthesis to generate tones, it was designed by John M. Hanert, Laurens Hammond and C. N. Williams, and was manufactured by the Hammond company. Only 1,069 Novachords were built over a period from 1939 to 1942. It was one of very few electronic products released by Hammond that was not intended to emulate the sound of an organ.
SkaSka (skaː; skjæ) is a music genre that originated in Jamaica in the late 1950s and was the precursor to rocksteady and reggae. It combined elements of Caribbean mento and calypso with American jazz and rhythm and blues. Ska is characterized by a walking bass line accented with rhythms on the off beat. It was developed in Jamaica in the 1960s when Stranger Cole, Prince Buster, Clement "Coxsone" Dodd, and Duke Reid formed sound systems to play American rhythm and blues and then began recording their own songs.
Valve amplifierA valve amplifier or tube amplifier is a type of electronic amplifier that uses vacuum tubes to increase the amplitude or power of a signal. Low to medium power valve amplifiers for frequencies below the microwaves were largely replaced by solid state amplifiers in the 1960s and 1970s. Valve amplifiers can be used for applications such as guitar amplifiers, satellite transponders such as DirecTV and GPS, high quality stereo amplifiers, military applications (such as radar) and very high power radio and UHF television transmitters.
TelharmoniumThe Telharmonium (also known as the Dynamophone) was an early electrical organ, developed by Thaddeus Cahill c. 1896 and patented in 1897. The electrical signal from the Telharmonium was transmitted over wires; it was heard on the receiving end by means of "horn" speakers. Like the later Hammond organ, the Telharmonium used tonewheels to generate musical sounds as electrical signals by additive synthesis. It is considered to be the first electromechanical musical instrument. Cahill built three versions: The Mark I weighed 7 tons.
ClavinetThe Clavinet is an electrically amplified clavichord invented by Ernst Zacharias and manufactured by the Hohner company of Trossingen, West Germany, from 1964 to 1982. The instrument produces sounds with rubber pads, each matching one of the keys and responding to a keystroke by striking a given point on a tensioned string, and was designed to resemble the Renaissance-era clavichord. Although originally intended for home use, the Clavinet became popular on stage, and could be used to create electric guitar sounds on a keyboard.
Count BasieWilliam James "Count" Basie (ˈbeɪsi; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and their first recording. He led the group for almost 50 years, creating innovations like the use of two "split" tenor saxophones, emphasizing the rhythm section, riffing with a big band, using arrangers to broaden their sound, and others.
Combo organA combo organ, so-named and classified by popular culture due to its original intended use by small, touring jazz, pop and dance groups known as "combo bands", as well as some models having "Combo" as part of their brand or model names, is an electronic organ of the frequency divider type, generally produced between the early 1960s and the late 1970s. This type of organ predated, and contributed largely to, the development of modern synthesizers.
Sound moduleA sound module is an electronic musical instrument without a human-playable interface such as a piano-style musical keyboard. Sound modules have to be operated using an externally connected device, which is often a MIDI controller, of which the most common type is the musical keyboard. Another common way of controlling a sound module is through a sequencer, which is computer hardware or software designed to record and playback control information for sound-generating hardware.
