The folks at EHX have a vested interest in teaching people about modulation, so they can sell more pedals. I’m cool with that, because they did a pretty good job with these videos.
These are not for effects junkies. Their audience is people who don’t use pedals and haven’t in the past. If you can’t describe the difference between a chorus and flanger, or couldn’t pick out when one is being used on a recording, watch these. They’ll help. If you’ve got $500 worth of modulation pedals on your board already, move on.
The first part focuses on two very related, almost identical effects: Flange and Chorus. They give a fairly introductory overview of how these pedals work, but spend a lot of their time doing demos. I think that’s what make these things worthwhile for the newbies out there. Everyone has chorus/flanger demos out there, but there’s not much that let’s you audibly understand the difference between the two.
Check this out:
In part two, it’s on to two effects that aren’t related, but get mixed up all the time. Tremolo and vibrato. I covered tremolo pretty in depth in the past, but vibrato remains a bit untamed.
Once again, the focus is on hearing what these things do.