Talk:Bigsby

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[edit] Removed text

...(tremolo) refers to the act of disregarding rhythm to rapidly produce pitches when musical notation calls for such a treatment...

User:Rohirok has beaten me to it in rephrasing this. I'm still not altogether sure what it means; I think there is some information there, although it may go perilously close to original research.

The claim that disregarding rhythm is involved is I think probably the observation of a musician, most likely an electric guitarist. I'm another of those, although I rarely use the whammy bar myself, to the point that I have actually removed it from the 6-string I most often play nowadays! But back in the 1970s, when I used a lot of wah-wah pedal on stage, the most normal technique was to operate the pedal rhythmically with your right foot while consciously avoiding synchronising the movement to the rhythm of the music. For some canonical examples of this technique, listen to almost any Jimi Hendrix recording from the late 1960s (he may have used his left foot, being left-handed).

Electronically scanned devices such as the electroharmonix Bad Stone phase shifter could be adjusted to produce similar effects, but quite different to a manually (there must be a better term for a foot operated device) operated pedal, whose operator introduced a subtle relationship to the music absent from the electronically scanned device. The other thing was, at slow scan frequencies the effect of the electronic scan was unreproducible on stage, it came out significantly different every time, while the wah-wah was reproducible. Both had their uses in live music.

A vibrato unit is electronically scanned of course, so at low scan frequencies the same thing happens so far as reproducing a sound live goes. For an example try the Creedence song Long As I Can See the Light.

As I say, this is at least bordering on original research. If we have only my first-hand observations, it is original research. But I'm sure someone more authoritative than I has made such observations somewhere, and if we can find them, then we'd have some encyclopedic information that's currently lacking from this and related articles.

The claim that musical notation is involved is I think false. Again, I think I can see how someone could come to this conclusion in trying to compare the classical and contemporary approaches, but it's a bad guess IMO. Andrewa 18:59, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Bigsby Tail unit: Origin of "Whammy Bar"

In 1963, seminal blues-rock guitarist Lonnie Mack released several instrumental solos, including "Memphis" (Billboard #5), "Wham" (Billboard #24) and the lesser-known, but even more technically-challenging "Chicken Pickin'". All of these classics were recorded on an original 1956 Gibson Flying "V", retrofitted with a Bigsby tail piece unit, which Mack used (along with tube-fired Magnatone amps)with great success in order to create an overall sound that was unique at that time.

The term "Whammy Bar" (so named after Mack's 1963 recording "Wham") came into common usage among guitarists, many of whom, including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton but especially Stevie Ray Vaughan, were greatly influenced not only by the distinctive blues-rock style which Mack pioneered, but also by his use of the the vibrato arm to create distortion, an element of rock guitar which reached its pinnacle in the late '60's and early '70's during the "psychedelic" era.