Compressor Effects for the Electric Guitar

Part of the Video Series How to Use a Guitar Effect Pedal

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Learn how to use the compressor effects pedal when playing the electric guitar in these free online music video lessons.

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Posted by rock_temple_pilot on Thursday, 27 March, 2008 at 9:09 AM

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Thanks for the tips. I had always thought compression was worthless but I was using it on my overdrive/distortion output and not clean.

Video Transcript

Compressor Effects for the Electric Guitar
Hi, my name is Gary Schutt. We’re talking about guitar effects, right now it’s an effect called the compressor. Compressors can be used for such things such as vocals, drums, base, but right now we’re going to be talking about it for guitar. This is a very practical effect for your clean sound, your direct pretty clean sound. If you do a lot of funk, this effect will come in handy. It’s a very subtle effect because it doesn’t really do anything, what it does is as it’s name suggest, it compresses your sound. When you play softly and then you play really loud, you can hear the dynamics, if I step on my compressor, you can hear that my soft playing is pretty loud and my loud playing still has the same intensity as being loud, but the signal itself is not really loud both are relatively the same volume. See, off – on. Like I said this is really good for funk, take it off. Like I said, it’s a really subtle effect; if you don’t know you’re using it you probably won’t know you’re using it. Listen to how much longer the note holds out for, so the effect is off – it dies off after about 5 or 6 seconds after I turn it on. Listen to that sucker go.

About the Expert

Expert: Gary Schutt has a degree in songwriting from the Berklee College of Music. Gary has written over 150 songs, has 5 CDs, and 1 DVD currently available. Read More