Wah-wah 52921 213198476 2008-05-18T06:27:15Z Mellum 45569 [[WP:UNDO|Undid]] revision 212148661 by [[Special:Contributions/71.228.10.102|71.228.10.102]] ([[User talk:71.228.10.102|talk]]) {{otheruses4|wah-wah in brass and electronic music||Wah wah}} '''''Wah-wah''''' is an imitative word (or [[onomatopoeia]]) for the sound of altering the resonance of musical notes to extend expressiveness, sounding much like a human voice saying the syllable ''wah''. The wah-wah effect is a [[spectral glide]], a "modification of the [[vowel quality]] of a tone" (Erickson 1975, p.72). Although this effect is thought of almost exclusively as the electric guitar [[wah-wah pedal]], it is also used in other contexts, listed here. == Wah-wah in trumpet and trombone playing == Although perhaps best known from the [[electric guitar]]'s [[wah-wah pedal]], the sound is much older, having been significantly developed by [[trumpet]] and [[trombone|trombone]] players using [[mute (music)|mute]]s in the early days of [[jazz]]. [[Joe "King" Oliver]] recorded "Wawawa" in the [[1920s|'20s]]. [[Bubber Miley]], [[Cootie Williams]], trumpeters, and [[Tricky Sam Nanton]], trombonist, of the [[Duke Ellington|Duke Ellington Orchestra]] pioneered in using plunger mutes ("[[Plunger|plumber's helper]]") to create wah-wah sounds. The effect was used in the [[1930s|'30s]] on "[[Sugar Blues]]" by commercial [[Dixieland]] trumpeter [[Clyde McCoy]], who built a long career around the sound, and even today has a popular wah-wah pedal by [[Vox (musical equipment)|VOX]] named after him. [[The Fat Man (song)|"The Fat Man"]] the first hit by [[Fats Domino]] features Fats singing vocal trumpet wah-wah. Another [[New Orleans]] singer, [[Chuck Carbo]] frequently performs vocal wah-wah. [[Karlheinz Stockhausen]] notates the use of the wah-wah mute in his ''Punkte'' (1952/1962) in terms of transitions between open to close using open and closed circles connected by a line (Erickson 1975, p.73). A familiar use of the wah-wah sound by trumpets today is the [[Peanuts]] cartoons. In the majority of cartoons, adults didn't speak, the sound they produced was a wah-wah sound. The most well known is [[Charlie Brown]]'s teacher. == Wah-wah in electronic music == In [[electronic music]], wah-wah effects are easy to produce by controlling any number of filter types with a modulation envelope. Wah-wah effects can also be achieved by using a [[vocoder]] to modulate an instrument sound, and speaking "wah-wah" into the modulation control input of the vocoder. The vocoder then impresses the [[formant]]s of the spoken sound into the musical sound. ==Source== *Erickson, Robert (1975). ''Sound Structure in Music''. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-02376-5. ==See also== *[[Wah-wah pedal]] *[[Muted trumpet]] *[[Mute (music)]] *[[Subtractive synthesis]] [[Category:Musical performance techniques]] [[Category:Onomatopoeia]] [[fr:Wah-wah]] [[no:Wah-wah]] [[sv:Wah-wah]] ==External links== *[http://youtube.com/watch?v=oK0g4oWUU6A A YouTube video of electric guitar played with a Wah-wah pedal]