How To Find Free Guitar Effects

In many ways, guitar effects are the tools a guitarist uses to develop a distinctive style. All your practice – your scales, your chords – are given the stamp of individuality by your choice of guitar effects. There are quite a few guitar effects programs available, and some of the most highly recommended ones are free. There are a variety of ways to add effects to your guitar playing, and you do not have to disturb your neighbors by using an amplifier. Your keys to juicy guitar effects are a sound card and a pair of headphones.

Bear in mind that the idea behind guitar effects is to make your guitar sound better and have more authority and kick-buttle than it would have straight out of the box.

Guitar Rig 3 by Native Instruments is one of the most highly thought of guitar effects programs. It is not free but you can download a demo and play around with it for half an hour. Bass and guitar effects are produced by imitating classic amplifiers, microphones, pedals and cabinets. Guitar Rig 3 has authentic sounding pedals and stomp boxes, bass cabinets and mikes. You have the pleasurable task of mixing your sound with the programs drag and drop interface.

PitchWorks DX 1.2 is a plug-in which allows the adjustment of a music sample’s pitch or tempo, or you can change pitch AND tempo. For accurate tempo change and avoid artifacts an accuracy parameter is available. All parameters possess two tweak modes: draft, in which you can tweak parameters quickly with GUI wheels and precise mode, where you input precise values into edit boxes.

Guitar FX is the guitar effects program for the guitarist with no money and an old desk-top computer. This program hasn’t had any development for a long time but it will give a great variety of sounds with very little training.

A more up-to-date free program is Audacity. This is an open source program for any operating system known to man. The built-in effects include phaser, wah-wah, reverse and echo. You can change tapes and vinyl discs to digital recordings or CDs, record your own live audio and edit a range of sound files. You can make your own multi track recordings using a mike or line-in. You can also change your pitch without changing the tempo and you can get rid of any pesky hum, hiss or random coughing noises. The guitar player has at his disposal a mountain of effects like bass boost, equalization and FFT filter.

Here is a video on some guitar effects of a different kind . . .