Our Nature Awakened

Sixth in a series

By Yas Mamemachi
Kanazawa, Japan

Professor Yamada talks about the secret of the wah-wah pedal. (Photo provided by Professor Masashi Yamada)

he wah-wah pedal, an electric guitar effect, changes the tone of the signal to create distinctive sounds that resemble, say, a crying baby. The pedal is a low tech device with rather simple circuits, and one that appeals to many people in the music industry, including professional musicians and a guitar factory craftsman who were described in previous articles in this series.

The musicians spotlighted in the stories say that they get excited or feel high on stage when using the wah-wah pedal. One of them says that he never uses the wah-wah pedal unless he feels emotionally overwrought.

They also say that synthesizers, which can create any sound a wah-wah pedal can, rarely make them play with the same sort of spirit. The low tech pedal makes them feel connected to music, but the synthesizer does not.

Why? The musicians have no clue. So, we are going to ask scientists in related fields.

The first is Masashi Yamada, a university professor in Kanazawa, Japan. His expertise covers music acoustics, music psychology, and entertainment engineering.

He has published many research papers, including “Do piano lessons improve basic temporal controllability for maintaining a uniform tempo?” and “The effect of music on the performance and impression in a video racing game.”

He has recently carried out research into how music and screen images in a Biohazard-type video game mutually influence each other to create a sense of fear in the game’s players.

The professor is an ex-rock music kid, too.

“I was a keyboard player in a so-called British progressive rock band for fun, like Keith Emerson of ELP and Rick Wakeman of Yes. I once had a chat with Rick Wakeman, a couple years ago. He is OK,” he says with smile.

Two to four times per second

The first and foremost question is why musicians and listeners are still attracted to this tiny, low-tech sound equipment, which was originally created in the 1960’s.

Professor Yamada started explaining what the wah-wah pedal is about. According to the professor, the sound of an electric guitar includes a variety of high frequencies or high-level harmonics. As a robust filter, the pedal is designed to remove specific high frequencies. These specific frequencies are called “cut-off frequency.”

In other words, the wah-wah pedal is designed to control such cut-off frequency momentarily in various ways when the guitarist steps on and off the pedal so that the original tone of the guitar becomes mellow at one point and then distorted and sharp at another.

“Do you know how many times per second a wah-wah pedal makes the ‘wah, wah, wah, wah’ sound?” the professor asks. “The answer is two to four times per second,” he replies.

“How many times per second cab a babble to his or her mother, ‘goo-goo-gaa-gaa, when the mother cradles her baby within the crook of her arm? The answer is two to four times per second.”

“How about the number of times per second you may feel comfortable when you let your arms dangle in front of you? Again, it is two to four times per second.”

“The two-to-four times per second interval may be a kind of magic rhythm; the pedal can make many players and listeners comfortable because of such magic rhythm,” the professor explains.

Sign of survivors in the law of the jungle

Two to four times per second, hmmm. Then, how about the musicians’ “synthesizer allergy,” Professor Yamada?

“I think the issue is the source of sound,” the professor says. “In the case of the wah-wah pedal, the tone changes colorfully when musicians step on and off the pedal in a delicate manner. So, you could say that the musicians feel connected to the equipment. In other words, the sound is created by such a connection or human touch. But the musicians can hardly made a similar emotional tie to a synthesizer.”

The electric cellist in the fifth story in this series says, “When you use the wah-wah pedal, though you get a vibrato on the cello, the single tone can be sustained longer; that’s the most exciting moment.” To sustain the single tone might be another key to figuring out the wah-wah pedal’s secret of attraction.

Professor Yamada says that the cellist’s quote reminded him of the reverberant sound of a temple bell.

“It could be said that many Japanese tend to listen to temple bells when hearing the sound. We understand that one of the reasons such bells get attention from many Japanese comes from their reverberant sound,” He continues. “Our sense of hearing is designed to follow such reverberant sounds.”

“So the musician and the audience instinctively react to the sustaining sound by the wah-wah pedal, just like the reaction to a temple bell.”

“After all, we are the descendants of species with a hearing ability to understand the wind of changes surrounding them and to survive in the law of the jungle, Professor Yamada points out.

“We have to remember that our ears work 24 hours a day, unlike our eyes, which are closed during sleep,” he continues. “With such hardworking ears, we are hyper-sensitive to changes in tone around us. The dramatic change in tone and/or the sustaining tone created by the wah-wah pedal may enervate our nature.”

How about the kind of singing melody lines that musicians play with the wah-wah pedals?

“Speaking words means to change tones constantly, while the level and volume of the voice are maintained,” says the professor. “So in a limited sense the wah-wah sound is close to a speaking voice and that the mouths of musicians who play with the wah-wah pedal might move as the wah-wah sound comes out.”

At the end of the interview the professor recommended two other experts. One of them has expertise in audio engineering and the other is a neuropsychologist specializing in the brain function of recognizing music.

So let’s go see these experts in Kyoto where the Japanese Society for Music Perception and Cognition is located. They are members of the academic society. So is Professor Yamada.

The story of the wah-wah pedal continues.