Every band at that poopty rock/"metal" festival abused the fuck out of a wah, Godsmack, Shinedown, Puddle of Mud, Drowning Pool, Black label Society...ugh, I mean I don't really like any of these bands anyways besides Shinedown. but what the fuck. They'd use it for rhythms and leads, they cock it forward for fucking everything. Just sounds horrible, even my friends noticed and they don't know shit about music.
My old band played a show with a bunch of typical metal bands that used the hell out of wah pedals. Every song had one wah break from pretty much every band that wasn't ours. After the show the other guitarist in my band said he wanted a wah pedal. I 'd him until he took it back.
I've never really gotten the point outside of funk and groovy stuff. I think it really obscures leads and sounds terrible if you roll it forward it's like cutting off everything but the nasty upper end of the guitar you don't even really want to hear in the first place.
But like every popular metal band, or "cookie-cutter" metal band abuses them so badly...can someone explain this? They really sound horrible in metal unless they're used really, really sparingly, and even then in metal it's sort of gross.
I don't know. A lot of them might do it to hide the fact that they suck. Or, to try to at least. Kirk Hammett, for example.
I kinda like the tuby sound Wylde gets on the records. It sounds like shit live though, but if it's just rolling the pedal forwards to change the sound I've got no problems with it. Players who use it to mask the fact that they're playing the same boring patterns over and over again should die.
That guy just sucks beyond belief and uses the wah to disguise it when he's strutting around the stage spitting at people and douchy shit like that. All his solos sound the same.
this is why: [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j-lCzCSvOI"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9j-lCzCSvOI[/ame]
The wah really got old in the 80s. Not really a fan now...it's become such a cliche. Shame because it's actually a pretty cool sound.
But he doesn't use it to mask the fact that he sucks like most others do, because he does not suck. The wah in that song actually sounds totally badass.
I fucking HATE wah pedals. As others have mentioned, a part of the appeal is that it covers up sloppy playing, plus I guess it probably sounds pretty cool to the average, non-musician listener. Used sparsely and in the right context, though, it can be kinda cool, like that one riff in The Glass Prison.
That JP video just confirmed what I already knew. It sounds terrrrrrible when incorporated in any fast type of run, especially wank speed picking. It sounds decent for a swell type effect on long notes, but gets worse and worse as the notes get bunched together.
Yeah I agree...I think a wah sounds terrible in metal no matter what. It just shouldn't go with metal, it sounds fucking weird.
fucking metal guitarists, how do they wah? it has its uses, i guess, but most times i hear it i just think how much better that guitar part would have sounded without it.
i agree with you on the point about using it for swelled notes (swelled? whatever). i think JP uses it quite well most of the time and in the vid posted i don't mind it being used on the faster picked stuff but it definitely sounds best when used in phrasing/dynamic/musical ideas like the sustained swell stuff earlier on in the solo. you can get some really tasty sounds out of it when you combine it with bends, which Petrucci does a couple times in the solo. Using it over fast picked notes as a type of envelope or filter is pretty bland and boring though, i agree.
Like just about anything else, it sounds great until it's overused. It's really no different than alternate picking, sweep picking, harmonics, whammy bar, tapping, flanger, etc.
I thought they were called wah-wah pedals. Because, you know, after one wah there is always, at least, another wah. Personally I'm all for them. One day I think I'll get one and use it one my trumpet.
Heh. Well they really do kill me inside, I can't stand them and metal is ruining the pedal altogether for me. Now when I listen to a wah line in funk or fusion, or slash who I've always thought used it really well I just naturally hate it. I think I heard a Guthrie Govan solo a few nights ago with a wah and was like , and Guthrie's my boy.
I fucking love the wah sound when done right. Metal sucks regardless; using wah in it is like putting lipstick on a pig. The solos in Duel With The Devil and All Along The Watchtower have some killer wah sections. As a rule of thumb, unfunky white boys should not use the wah pedal.
I happen to be in favor of [ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B-E6FDf9GkA"]saxophones with wah-wah pedals! Woo![/ame]
The Amott brothers use it to great effect in Arch Enemy. (I don't know if they're still both in the band thought, I know one left to study or so, then came back. Whatever, can't be bothered to look it up).
Oh, that reminds me. Mike McCready knows how to use wah appropriately too, but he's too mainstream for anyone here to enjoy.
