How to Use a Whammy Bar – An Electric Guitarist Guide
Learning to properly how to use a whammy bar (also commonly called a tremolo bar) is one of the concepts that many people that learn how to play electric guitar completely neglect. It isn’t simply a matter of newer players avoiding this technique because it can be difficult to master, books, online guitar lessons, and even many live instructors will often neglect it or only cover it superficially. However, the amount of interesting and unique sounds and effects a whammy bar can create make mastering it a very fun and rewarding aspect of guitar playing.
Types of Whammy Bar Systems
Before starting it is important to be aware of what basic kind of whammy bars are out there and which one is on a particular guitar. There are three basic types, floating bridges, Fender-style bridges, and Bigsby-style bridges. The main difference is that floating style bridges allow guitarists to pull the note to a higher pitch, as well as lower the pitch.
Fender-style and Bigsby-style bridges generally only allow a guitarist to lower the pitch of the note. While some of them can be set up in a way to allow the guitarist to pull notes to higher pitches, those are generally quite unstable and will go out of tune quite often.
Basic Whammy Bar Usage
There are three basic tricks that most people pick-up when learning how to use a whammy bar. While all of these are described in this online guitar lesson as pushing down, players learning how to play electric guitars with floating bridges can perform all of these by pulling up on the bar for the opposite effect.
The first is quite naturally the dive bomb, which is quite prevalent because of the ease of use. The guitarist simply plays a note (including harmonic notes) or sometimes a chord and presses the whammy bar down towards the guitar. The speed and force of pushing down on the bar can be altered to whatever degree the guitarist wants, but that is it.
Commonly referred to as the scream, the second trick is essentially the exact opposite of the dive bomb. The bar starts out pressed towards the guitar body for the desired amount, and the note is then played. The bar is then either released so the bridge springs pulls the notes back to the original pitch or the guitarist controls the rate it goes up by slowly decreasing pressure.
The last common one is simply the combination of the dive bomb and the scream to form what is often called a dip. The bar is pressed in and then released. This is quite often done on power chords that are held for long durations to add more interest to them.
Advanced Whammy Usage
The whammy bar opens a lot of options and interesting sounds for advanced users, but there really aren’t any set tricks that can be described in an online guitar lesson. An advanced user will actually learn how to use a whammy bar in place of other techniques. A guitarist is playing the entire whammy bar section by ear, and the bar is pressed or pulled until the guitarist hears the exact desired note. This is an area where ear training can’t be neglected while learning how to play electric guitar. Practice whammy sections by just playing each individual note, then try to replicate it using the bar. It can take some time to get it down, but it is worth it in the end.
