Hi guys, my name is Andy and in this lesson I'm giving you a quick overwiev
and a basic guide to guitar amplifiers, what to look out for and what all the
controls do on the guitar amplifier that you may have.
So if you have an electric guitar you gonna definitely need an amplifier to
simulate the sound that you hear on real songs. Now all the controls will vary
depending on what amplifier you buy, but here I'll take you through all the
common controls which you will see on the screen now. So typically at the far left
we have the input for your electric guitar and than most guitar amplifiers
that you will buy, even beginner ones, essentially have two amplifiers in them
that we would name, it has two channels. We have a clean channel and an overdrive channel.
You would switch between them by pressing this button, however on the more high-end
budget amplifiers you can get amplifiers with a pedal set that you can change mid song
from clean to overdrive. The clean channel sounds like this:
Essentially sounds like your electric guitar but amplified. And then when we
press this button we can get an overdriven sound which sounds like this:
The amount of overdrive, so this is maximum
and this is a little bit less
that is controlled by the gain. This gain can also be called distortion and there are
different terms for it
but any of these terms control the amount of overdrive or fuzz that you will hear.
Each of these channels will have its own separate volume so you can set the clean volume
relative to the overdrive channel volume. They we do commonly get a master
volume also, which isn't present on this particular amplifier. Then we have the EQ section
which typically consists of bass, middle and treble. Occasionally the middle is
called a contoured on some amplifiers but it still performs the same function
as the middle. So this is the same EQ as you would find on your hi-fi system or
on any stereo. Compared to the normal sound
if we turn the bass up we will got a more bassy sound
and if we turn the bass down, it sounds a lot thinner.
Similar for the treble, if we turn the treble up, it sounds a lot brighter
and if we turn the treble right down, it will sound duller.
Now those terms bright or dull, sometimes people mistake for pitch.
If a pitch is high, that's like a high note like this
if the sound is low, that can be a low note like this.
For terms of EQ it's better to use words like brighter or duller
rather than referring to a higher or lower sound which can be confused to high
or low pitchwise.
Now in different types of amplifiers you can't get different
types of fuzz or gain. The first type is overdrive which is emulated
a natural fuzz sound typically from older amplifiers from let's say the sixties or the seventies
which sounds more like this
That is simulating the sound of an old amplifier being turned up kind of too loud.
More modern amplifiers allow us to digitally clip the signal
and create distortion which sound more like this:
It's a far more saturated sound
more associated with very heavy rock and metal.
Now both overdrive and distortion have their applications in all styles of rock and pop music.
However the overdrive is gonna be more useful to us, for now,
as it just allows enough of an overdrive
for us to still hear what's going on while getting that rock sound.
If you get used to using distortion too often
what can happen is you get too much noise and everything becomes too saturated.
And you will be unable to really hear what you're actually playing.
So when we're using the overdrive or heavy, dirty channel
we typically want a more natural sound in overdrive like this
rather than anything significantly heavier than that as a beginner.
However it depends on what songs you choose as you go forward is the what sound you will get.
Every amplifier and even the same amplifiers can sound different
in different rooms and by through different guitars and everything like this
so you have to really start to use your ears
to simulate what you're hearing even on the record or from a demonstration.
Now some guitars have effects on them and an effect is added after this overdrive
and EQ and everything else. After the controls on your amplifier
to add another load of sound and to effect the overall sound.
The most common of which is something called reverb, which is a room sound simulating a space
and this is a sound with reverb for example.
Now, it's hard to hear what the reverb or the echo is actually doing, unless we play a really short sound.
That was much more evident then, because I silenced my guitar rather than giving a long strum
when you can't really tell it's happening. Now if we hearing a couple of single notes
you can hear that effect is taking place and it sounds like it is in a real space.
It sounds like it's in a very large room. That's different to the sound you get from a longer reverb.
There are different types of reverb ('hall', or many different types of reverb)
Here is my amplifier with a hall type reverb
which sounds much longer and it's different to just turning up the amount of the first reverb.
The second most common type of effect is a delay.
This is very similar to the effect you'll get from shouting down a tunnel.
It's just a repetition of the sound you just played.
Great examples of how to use delay on guitar can be shown from U2 songs played 'By The Edge'
including 'Where the streets have no name' and 'With or without you'.
This is the same example with a short delay time
and this is the same example with a long delay time
Now I am not willing to particularly endorse any specific amplifier or encourage you to buy from a particular brand at this time.
The idea is to give you the education of what these terms need so you can do your own research
and choose the amplifier that you wish.
And most importantly get the most out of the gear that you already have.
So I hope this video is really help to you, in the next lesson we will be covering the open string names
and than how to get your guitar in tune. I hope to see you there, bye for now.
You can download this video and the eBook that goes with this entire course by clicking in this area here.
Click over there to watch the next lesson here on Youtube.
Please subscribe if you haven't already
and all those links are in the description if you are watching on mobile