Wah-Wah-What was that?/ Listening 4- East St. Louis Toodle Oo

The Wah-Wah.  Yet another way guitarists have updated their tech to produce new and edgy sounds.  Originally a tube put into your mouth (called a vocorder), the guitarist would actually say wah wah to get the sound he was looking for.  That sound, is eerily similar to a plunger muted trumpet.  We talked last time about how if played right, a plunger muted instrument can almost sound human.  This is what the wah wah does as well.  Now a days, wah wahs are usually purely electric, using a foot pedal and the rocking back and forth motion of the guitarist's foot to give it that wah wah sound.

Electrically, the pedals take the sound input from the electric guitar and put it through as filter.  The filter, depending on the varied angle of the foot, can either just let it all pass through, or it can convolve the input with a pre-recorded wah, so the output is a wah'ed input.  For being as cool as that is ;) most of you will never really see it.  People watching guitarists are so focused on their hand placement, they completely forget that they are using their feet to generate the sound.

For the listening portion of this, we will look at Duke Ellington's 'East St Louis Toodle-oo'.  For all the visual readers, these pictures do a pretty good job of showing what East St. Louis , the "bad side of town" was feeling.  For you audio readers, the music speaks for it self.  You audio-visual readers will just love it.

This piece is very slow, almost somber, like a funeral march.  Calling back to New Orleans funeral marches. The people of ESL were in a rough patch, but it was still the city, which is always moving, which means there were always clubs playing music.  This, unlike my last listening, is slower and better for couple dancing with a lot of emotion.  Duke does a great job of capturing the vibe of the city and her people in this piece.  

It starts out with a couple saxes, a trombone, a trumpet, a piano, a bass, and even a banjo, along with drums.  I don't know the technical term for it, but my drummer friend used to call what the drummer is doing "stirring the soup".  He has wire brushes and stirs them on the snare and then flicks it on the beat.  All the instruments, save a trumpet, have a simple job.  Follow the chord progression.  After one run through the chords, the trumpet solo comes in.  The trumpet uses a plunger mute to get the growly, rugged sound he is looking for to encapsulate the mood.  Its grungy almost.  The plunger mute helps the trumpeter sound as if he is a man crying out, spilling his soul. This is in AABA format. It then starts to pick up, the band no longer just plays the chords but actually starts playing their own licks.  The trumpets blaring almost as if the city is protesting this guys struggle by showing him how great the city can be.  The format is ABAC  We then fall back into the growly trumpet for another round of A and then a heartfelt ending tag.

This growly trumpet is a desirable sound, especially if one is trying to convey a human.  Guitars can't get plunger mutes so they rely on wah wahs, and that does a fairly good job.  Here is Steely Dan's cover of the Dukes song, using a guitar with a wah wah, rather than a muted trumpet.

Its faster than Duke's but still has that human cry from the wah wah that was once reserved for plunger mutes.  Many artist, whether or not for guitar, use a wah wah or vocorder to get this effect on other instruments like synthesizers. I don't think it'll ever replace a good, old fashioned growly trumpet, though.