Wah Guitar Week Lick #5

Today's wah guitar lick is a more traditional example of the wah's use. It's a 70's kinda funk vibe aiming for a straight ahead wah sound. Using notes from the minor pentatonic try coming up with your own riffs using the wah and some string muting. In a rock context the ultimate example of a wah wah is Hendrix's "Voodoo Child (Slight Return)". In that song Jimi uses the wah to great effect on both the muted and non muted notes during the intro.

Wah Guitar Week Lick #4

To my ears the wah pedal has always added a very vocal sound to lead guitar lines. A great example of this is Joe Satriani's beautiful lead guitar in "Summer Song". I try to demonstrate the vocal quality of the wah in this guitar lick. Notice how it changes the way I phrase the guitar lick. This wasn't conscious I tried to play the lick the same but I find playing with the wah pedal actually makes my phrasing try for a more vocal sound. Sounds weird but hopefully that will make sense when you see the video. In this guitar lick I also used the whammy bar which is not reflected in the notation.

Wah Guitar Week Lick #3

Our third wah guitar lick uses a narrower range of the wah to accent the midrange frequencies and add some depth to a descending chord sequence where only the root note changes.

Wah Guitar Week Lick#2

Our second wah wah guitar lick uses a primarily muted 16th note rhythm where only the last 16th note in each bar is not muted but instead an octave is played. The octave pattern descends from E to D to C and the ends goes back to D. In the wah wah example in the video I start by keeping the wah in the bass position and just accent the last note of each bar with the wah. Gradually I deviate from this pattern a little and just move the wah when it feels right to me. Just for fun try to reverse the pattern and accent the muted notes with the wah in full treble mode ( toe down) and then bring it to full bass on the octave.

Wah Guitar Week Lick#1

The wah pedal is a versatile guitar effect and I hope that some of the following licks demonstrate a few of the different ways it can be used. In this guitar lick I play a pretty generic C# Minor Blues guitar phrase and use the wah mainly to accent the bends on the B and G strings.

Wah Wah Guitar Lick Week

I've always loved the wah pedal. It is a versatile effect that has been used in blues, rock and metal guitar playing. Despite it's simplicity it has a wide range of  uses that produce a large variety of sounds. Before I share some guitar licks using the wah pedal I thought I would share a free movie that documents its history. You can stream the whole documentary free on Crybaby Doc's youtube channel.

A Country Guitar Lick

This is a little country(ish) guitar lick. I'm certainly not a country guitar player but I am impressed, inspired and awe struck by many of the great country guitar players out there. Brad Paisley is touring my neck of the woods this year and thought I'd post a few country style guitar licks to celebrate. This one is a "tinylick" so no video but hopefully you can follow along with the guitar tab.

The guitar licks starts on the F# note on the 11th fret 3rd string. This note is bent up a whole step and held while the B on the 12th fret 2nd string is played then it is realeased. The "b" under the F# note throughout the notation indicates a whole step bend.