A volume pedal is a pedal that you work with your foot that allows you to control the volume of the incoming signal.

Volume pedals are commonly used by guitar players, but keyboard players also use them as well as other instruments,

and they allow for a surprising amount of expressivity in your playing. For that reason, volume petals and other petals in that kind of family are what's known as expression petals, and they really do help you express yourself. And the Welcome to Strong Songs, a Podcast, About Music. I'm your host Kirk Hamilton and I'm so glad that you

join me to talk about music played with wah pedals, music played with volume pedals,

and music played with all sorts of other expression pedals. We're going to be

talking about some very expressive guitar playing on this

episode and I'm excited to get into it, so find a comfortable place to sit, turn up the volume,

and enjoy the show. The first instrument that I really played was the saxophone and so I didn't really learn what volume pedals were for a long time.

Saxophone and other wind instruments, you kind of have the volume pedal built into yourself and that's why wind instruments are so wonderfully expressive because you can play really quiet and really loudly and you can kind of adjust that in so many different ways because you've got the power of your

breath behind you. When I first started messing with a volume pedal on the guitar

once I kind of had enough guitar chops to be able to play something to you know use

the pedal I was really surprised at how much you can do with the volume

pedal and then how retroactively I was realizing how many of the kind of iconic guitar solos and sounds that I knew were defined by the volume pedal.

It was a sound that I knew, especially the sound of the basically attackless guitar

note where you attack the note with the volume down and then you swell the volume pedal in so that the

note comes in with no pick and no attack. I knew that sound really well but I just

never thought about how guitar players were getting it and once I was able to do it for myself,

it made this whole world open up to me,

oh, this is a whole new texture

for the guitar that a lot of people have used really well.

So welcome back to the show,

I'm so glad as always that you're here and it's been really nice to hear

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