In this guitar pedals guide for beginners lesson, learn how pedals can be a guitar player's best friend. They help you to expand your creativity. One thing I love about playing rock guitar is the ability to enhance your sound with the art and science of guitar effects pedals! These things are great! What are effects pedals you say?? Well, Let me tell you.
What are guitar pedals?
Guitar pedals are what you use to create cool sounds with the guitar. And when it comes to Rock Guitar it’s encouraged. Now as you can see from the picture they are little stompboxes (guitar lingo) that you press with your feet to add color to your sound while you're “rockin' out” and having fun!
The art of guitar pedals is that you can use them to add a wide variety of colors to your playing. From cool distortion to echo to watery chorus sounds. You can hear these effects in many rock songs you hear on the radio. You can choose to use these individually one at a time, or you can use multiple ones in a chain-like shown in the picture above.
Pedalboard
These are multiple pedals that you hook together with external cables and can put in what’s called a pedalboard. As you can also see, they come in a variety of shapes and colors. So you can create something unique to you and your style of playing.
The science part comes with how you choose to set them up. How you set them up depends on your playing and how you want your sound to develop. You can choose this or that pedal first, then this or that one last. It’s really up to you. It’s best to put your distortion pedal first, or possibly the wah pedal first, but that once again is up to you.
The way the pedals are set up makes a difference in the sound and that’s why it’s considered a science. Because it requires experimenting and having fun doing it. This is what I love about pedals, you can switch them around and get a sound all your own.
Multi-effects processor
Now if you are saying ” I’m not that creative and don’t want to mess with all that but still want to have fun using guitar pedals” no problem. You can use something that has them all in one. A multi-effects processor. This is a device where all the pedals are in one single unit.
These are great because you don’t need any external cables to hook them together. They come already set to go. You just plug in and play. These are great too because they have a ton of additional features to them. Not just the pedals but functions to dial in a custom sound that sounds like no one else.
Now which one is better you ask? Well, that depends on you and your personality. Each has its advantages and drawbacks. The stompboxes come individually so you can create as you go, but are a bit limited in sound creation per pedal. The effects processors are nice in the fact they have all the pedals together for a fraction of the cost, but you have some limitations with these as well. I’d recommend trying them both out to see which style you like best.
Lesson conclusion
If you need further guidance be sure to check out the method book I authored, published, and sell on Amazon. Learn To Play the Electric Guitar.
