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Wah-wah
 
 
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Wah-wah is an imitative word (or onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, such as animal noises like "oink" or "meow", or suggesting its source object, such as "boom", "zoom", "click", "bunk", "clang", "buzz", "zap", or "bang"....
) 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
Spectral glide

A spectral glide is a "modification of the vowel quality of a tone" . Since the vowel quality of a pitch is determined by the overtones, spectrum, or timbre of that tone, a spectral glide is a move from one spectrum characteristic of a vowel to another....
, 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
Wah-wah pedal

A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, intended to mimic the human voice....
, it is also used in other contexts, listed here.

ough perhaps best known from 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....
's wah-wah pedal
Wah-wah pedal

A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, intended to mimic the human voice....
, the sound is much older, having been significantly developed by trumpet
Trumpet

The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest Register in the brass instrument family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BC....
 and trombone
Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass instrument family. Like all brass instruments, it is a lip-reed aerophone: sound is produced when the player?s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate....
 players using mute
Mute (music)

A mute is a device fitted to a musical instrument to alter the sound produced: by affecting the timbre, reducing the volume, or most commonly both....
s in the early days of jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
.

Joe "King" Oliver recorded "Wawawa" in the '20s
1920s

The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the "Jazz Age" or the "Roaring Twenties", when speaking about the United States and Canada. In Europe the decade is sometimes referred to as the "Golden Twenties"....
.






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Wah-wah is an imitative word (or onomatopoeia
Onomatopoeia

Onomatopoeia is a word or a grouping of words that imitates the sound it is describing, such as animal noises like "oink" or "meow", or suggesting its source object, such as "boom", "zoom", "click", "bunk", "clang", "buzz", "zap", or "bang"....
) 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
Spectral glide

A spectral glide is a "modification of the vowel quality of a tone" . Since the vowel quality of a pitch is determined by the overtones, spectrum, or timbre of that tone, a spectral glide is a move from one spectrum characteristic of a vowel to another....
, 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
Wah-wah pedal

A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, intended to mimic the human voice....
, it is also used in other contexts, listed here.

Wah-wah in trumpet and trombone playing

Although perhaps best known from 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....
's wah-wah pedal
Wah-wah pedal

A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, intended to mimic the human voice....
, the sound is much older, having been significantly developed by trumpet
Trumpet

The trumpet is a musical instrument with the highest Register in the brass instrument family. Trumpets are among the oldest musical instruments, dating back to at least 1500 BC....
 and trombone
Trombone

The trombone is a musical instrument in the brass instrument family. Like all brass instruments, it is a lip-reed aerophone: sound is produced when the player?s vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate....
 players using mute
Mute (music)

A mute is a device fitted to a musical instrument to alter the sound produced: by affecting the timbre, reducing the volume, or most commonly both....
s in the early days of jazz
Jazz

Jazz is a primarily American musical art form which originated at the beginning of the 20th century in African American communities in the Southern United States from a confluence of African and European music traditions....
.

Joe "King" Oliver recorded "Wawawa" in the '20s
1920s

The 1920s is sometimes referred to as the "Jazz Age" or the "Roaring Twenties", when speaking about the United States and Canada. In Europe the decade is sometimes referred to as the "Golden Twenties"....
. Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams
Cootie Williams

Charles Melvin Williams was an United States jazz and rhythm and blues trumpeter....
, trumpeters, and Tricky Sam Nanton
Tricky Sam Nanton

Joe "Tricky Sam" Nanton was a famous trombonist with the Duke Ellington Orchestra.Nanton was born in New York City and began playing professionally in Washington with bands led by Cliff Jackson and Elmer Snowden....
, trombonist, of the Duke Ellington Orchestra
Duke Ellington

Edward Kennedy "Duke" Ellington was an American composer, pianist, and bandleader.Duke Ellington was recognized during his life as one of the most influential Jazz royalty, if not in all American music and he is of only four jazz musicians ever to have been featured on the cover of Time magazine ....
 pioneered in using plunger mutes ("plumber's helper
Plunger

A plunger is a common device used to release stoppages in plumbing. The tool consists of a rubber cup with an attached stick "shaft", usually made of wood or bronze....
") to create wah-wah sounds.

The effect was used in the '30s
1930s

In Western Europe, Australia and the United States, more progressive reforms occurred as opposed to the extreme measures sought elsewhere. Roosevelt's New Deal attempted to use government spending to combat large-scale unemployment and severely negative growth....
 on "Sugar Blues
Sugar Blues (song)

Sugar Blues is a song that became popular by Clyde McCoy featuring the sound of the growling wah-wah mute. Although McCoy's version was strictly instrumental, there are lyrics....
" by commercial Dixieland
Dixieland

Dixieland music or sometimes referred to as Hot jazz or New Orleans jazz is a style of jazz which developed in New Orleans, Louisiana at the start of the 20th century, and was spread to Chicago and New York City by New Orleans bands in the 1910s....
 trumpeter Clyde McCoy
Clyde McCoy

Clyde McCoy , a famous jazz trumpet player, is best remembered for his themes song, Sugar Blues , and popularity expanding seven decades.Introduced in 1967, the Vox Clyde McCoy Wah-wah pedal was the most significant guitar effect of its time....
, who built a long career around the sound, and even today has a popular wah-wah pedal by VOX
Vox (musical equipment)

Vox is a musical equipment manufacturer which is most famous for making the Vox AC30 Instrument amplifier, the Vox electric organ, and a series of innovative but commercially unsuccessful electric guitars and bass guitars....
 named after him. "The Fat Man"
The Fat Man (song)

"The Fat Man" is a rhythm and blues song by Fats Domino, considered to be one of the first rock and roll records.The record was recorded for Imperial Records in Cosimo Matassa's J&M studio on Rampart Street in New Orleans, Louisiana on Saturday, 10 December, 1949....
 the first hit by Fats Domino
Fats Domino

Antoine Dominique "Fats" Domino is a classic Rhythm and blues and rock and roll pianist and singer-songwriter....
 features Fats singing vocal trumpet wah-wah. Another New Orleans singer, Chuck Carbo
Chuck Carbo

Hayward "Chuck" Carbo was an American R&B singer , best known for his time as a vocalist in the New Orleans group The Spiders .Carbo sang with his brother, Leonard "Chick" Carbo, in The Spiders , who recorded for Imperial Records in the 1950s and scored a string of hits on the U.S....
 frequently performs vocal wah-wah.

Karlheinz Stockhausen
Karlheinz Stockhausen

Karlheinz Stockhausen was a German composer, widely acknowledged by critics as one of the most important but also controversial composers of the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries....
 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
Peanuts

Peanuts is a print syndication daily strip and Sunday strip comic strip written and illustrated by Charles M. Schulz, which ran from October 2, 1950, to February 13, 2000 , continuing in reruns afterward....
 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
Charlie Brown

Charles "Charlie" Brown is the main character in the comic strip Peanuts by Charles M. Schulz.Charlie Brown and his creator have a common connection in that they are both the sons of barbers, but whereas Schulz's work is described as the "most shining example of the American success story", Charlie Brown is an example of "the great Amer...
's teacher.

Wah-wah in electronic music

In electronic music
Electronic music

Electronic music is music that employs electronic musical instruments and electronic music technology in its production. In general a distinction can be made between sound produced using electromechanical means and that produced using electronic technology....
, 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
Vocoder

A vocoder, , is an analysis / synthesis system, mostly used for speech in which the input is passed through a multiband filter, each filter is passed through an envelope follower, the control signals from the envelope followers are communicated, and the decoder applies these control signals to corresponding filters in the synthesizer....
 to modulate an instrument sound, and speaking "wah-wah" into the modulation control input of the vocoder. The vocoder then impresses the formant
Formant

A formant is a peak in the frequency spectrum of a sound caused by Acoustics resonance. In phonetics, the word refers to sounds produced by the vocal tract....
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
    Wah-wah pedal

    A wah-wah pedal is a type of guitar effects pedal that alters the tone of the signal to create a distinctive effect, intended to mimic the human voice....
  • Muted trumpet
  • Mute (music)
    Mute (music)

    A mute is a device fitted to a musical instrument to alter the sound produced: by affecting the timbre, reducing the volume, or most commonly both....
  • Subtractive synthesis
    Subtractive synthesis

    Subtractive synthesis is a method of subtracting harmonic content from a sound via sound synthesis, characterised by the application of an audio filter to an audio signal....