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The EBow or ebow (brand name for "Electronic Bow
Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
" or Energy Bow) (often spelled E-bow in common usage) is a hand-held, battery-powered electronic device for playing the electric guitar
Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickup to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker....
, invented by Greg Heet in 1969. Instead of having the strings hit by the fingers or a pick
Guitar pick

A guitar pick is a type of plectrum designed for use on a guitar. Over time people have made picks of various materials, including plastic, rubber, felt, Tortoiseshell material, wood, metal, and rock ....
, they are moved by the electromagnetic field created by the device, producing a sound reminiscent of using a bow on the strings
Bowed guitar

Bowed guitar is a method of playing a guitar, acoustic or electric, in which the guitarist uses a bow to play the instrument, similar to playing a cello, or a viola da gamba, the latter also having six strings and frets, but tuned like a lute....
.

The EBow is used to produce a variety of sounds not usually playable on an electric guitar.






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Ebow
The EBow or ebow (brand name for "Electronic Bow
Bow (music)

In music, a bow is moved across some part of a musical instrument, causing vibration which the instrument emits as sound. The vast majority of bows are used with string instruments, although some bows are used with musical saws and other bowed idiophones....
" or Energy Bow) (often spelled E-bow in common usage) is a hand-held, battery-powered electronic device for playing the electric guitar
Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickup to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker....
, invented by Greg Heet in 1969. Instead of having the strings hit by the fingers or a pick
Guitar pick

A guitar pick is a type of plectrum designed for use on a guitar. Over time people have made picks of various materials, including plastic, rubber, felt, Tortoiseshell material, wood, metal, and rock ....
, they are moved by the electromagnetic field created by the device, producing a sound reminiscent of using a bow on the strings
Bowed guitar

Bowed guitar is a method of playing a guitar, acoustic or electric, in which the guitarist uses a bow to play the instrument, similar to playing a cello, or a viola da gamba, the latter also having six strings and frets, but tuned like a lute....
.

The EBow is used to produce a variety of sounds not usually playable on an electric guitar. By varying the EBow's linear position on the string, the user can produce different string overtones, and also fade in and out by lowering and raising the EBow. Furthermore, starting with the current generation of EBow (PlusEbow, the 4th edition Ebow), the user also gains an additional mode known as harmonic mode, which produces a higher harmonic sound instead of the fundamental note.

A wide variety of artists have used the EBow in a wide variety of musical styles. An early pioneer of EBow playing was Bill Nelson
Bill Nelson (musician)

Bill Nelson is a prolific guitarist, songwriter, Painting and Experimental music musician from Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England. He currently lives in Selby....
, who introduced it to Stuart Adamson
Stuart Adamson

Stuart Adamson , was an English-born Scottish guitarist, vocalist, and songwriter. He founded the top-40 Scottish art-punk band The Skids and later the more mainstream rock group Big Country, as well as the 1990s alternative country rock act, The Raphaels....
 of The Skids
The Skids

The Skids were an art-punk/punk rock and New Wave music band from Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, founded in 1977 by Stuart Adamson , William Simpson , Thomas Kellichan and Richard Jobson ....
. Adamson went on to use it heavily with Big Country
Big Country

Big Country were a Rock band from Dunfermline, Fife, Scotland, popular in the early to mid-1980s but still releasing material for a cult following....
, and it formed an integral part of their well-known "bagpipe sound". More recently, it has been used on Opeth's
Opeth

Opeth is a Swedish heavy metal music band founded in Stockholm, in 1990. While the band has been through several personnel changes, singer, guitarist, and songwriter Mikael ?kerfeldt has remained Opeth's driving force since joining shortly after its inception....
 2001 album Blackwater Park
Blackwater Park

Blackwater Park is the fifth full-length studio album from the Sweden Death metal#Progressive death metal band Opeth. It was originally released on February 27, 2001 under Music For Nations and Koch Records....
, in order to create ambient background melodies.

Besides its appearance in Rock and Jazz music, the E-Bow also made its way in the domain of contemporary art music, being used by John Cage
John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer. A pioneer of Aleatoric music, electronic music and Extended technique, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde and, in the opinion of many, the most influential American composer of the 20th century....
 in his harp piece A Postcard from Heaven (1982), Karlheinz Essl
Karlheinz Essl

Karlheinz Essl is an Austrian composer, performer, sound artist, Improvisation and composition teacher....
 in (2008) for electric guitar and live-electronics, Elliott Sharp
Elliott Sharp

Elliott Sharp is an United States multi-instrumentalist, composer, and performer.A key figure in the avant-garde and experimental music scene in New York City for over thirty years, Sharp has released over sixty-five recordings ranging from blues, jazz, and Orchestra to Noise music, no wave rock, and techno music....
 on SFERICS (1996), Arnold Dreyblatt
Arnold Dreyblatt

Arnold Dreyblatt is an United States composer and visual artist. He studied music with Pauline Oliveros, La Monte Young, Alvin Lucier and media art with Steina and Woody Vasulka....
 in E-Bow Blues (released 1998) and David First
David First

David First is an American composer. His music most often deals with drones and interference Beat s, the latter aligning his music with that of Alvin Lucier....
 in A Bet on Transcendence Favors the House (2008).

While the EBow is not normally used with the electric bass guitar
Bass guitar

The electric bass guitar is a stringed instrument played primarily with the fingers or thumb , or by using a plectrum.The bass guitar is similar in appearance and construction to an electric guitar, but with a larger body, a longer neck and Scale length, and usually four strings tuned to the same pitches as those of the double bass, whic...
, which has heavier strings, Michael Manring
Michael Manring

Michael Manring is an American bass guitar from the San Francisco Bay Area, ....
 (who uses light bass strings) has persevered, and it features heavily on his 1995 album Thönk. He has even been known to use two at once.

Although the EBow is most commonly played on the electric guitar
Electric guitar

An electric guitar is a type of guitar that uses pickup to convert the vibration of its steel-cored strings into an electrical current, which is made louder with an instrument amplifier and a speaker....
 because of the ease of use and the responsiveness obtainable from the pickup
Pickup (music)

A pickup device acts as a transducer that captures mechanical vibrations and converts them to an electrical signal, which can be instrument amplifier and sound recording....
, it has also been used in applications with the steel-string acoustic guitar
Steel-string acoustic guitar

A steel-string acoustic guitar, is a modern form of guitar descended from the classical guitar, but strung with steel strings for a brighter, louder sound....
. For example, Pink Floyd
Pink Floyd

Pink Floyd are an English Rock music band who initially earned recognition for their psychedelic rock and space rock music, and later, as they evolved, for their progressive rock music....
 guitarist David Gilmour
David Gilmour

David Jon Gilmour Order of the British Empire , is an England musician, best known as the guitarist, lead singer, and one of the main songwriters in the band Pink Floyd....
 used one on his Gibson J-200
Gibson J-200

Gibson J-200 is an acoustic guitar model produced by the Gibson Guitar Corporation.Gibson entered into production of this model in 1938 as its top-of-the-line flat top guitar, initially called the Super Jumbo, changing the name in 1939 to the Super Jumbo 200....
 acoustic in the 1994 song Take It Back
Take It Back

"Take It Back" is a song from Pink Floyd's 1994 in music album, The Division Bell. While most apparently a love song, it can also be interpreted to be about Mother Nature, and how man abuses the Earth....
 to great effect. Generally an acoustic guitar gives a limited response for varying reasons, including the density and spacing of the guitar strings. But despite these limitations, using an EBow on an acoustic guitar gives a rich, flute
Flute

The flute is a musical instrument of the woodwind family. Unlike other woodwind instruments, a flute is a reedless wind instrument that produces its sound from the flow of air against an edge....
 and clarinet
Clarinet

The clarinet is a musical instrument in the woodwind family. The name derives from adding the suffix -et meaning little to the Italian word clarino meaning a particular type of trumpet, as the first clarinets had a strident tone similar to that of a trumpet....
-like tone with a slow-swelling response.

Furthermore, an EBow can also be utilised on a grand piano (with depressed sustain pedal) in order to create sustained sinusoidal sounds as it was used by Olga Neuwirth
Olga Neuwirth

Olga Neuwirth is an Austrian composer.As a child at the age of seven, Neuwirth began lessons on trumpet. She later studied composition in Vienna at the Vienna Academy of Music and Performing Arts under Erich Urbanner, while studying at the Electroacoustic Institute....
 in Hooloomooloo (1997).

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