This is a brief overview of how effects have been invented over the past hundred years.
1935 – A Spring reverb is added to the Hammond organ.
1937 – Don Leslie introduces the ‘Rotating Leslie Cabinet’ which produces a Doppler effect much like a passing police siren. The speaker also produces a warm tremolo, vibrato and chorus effect and is adopted by Hammond organ owners.
1942 – Vocoders were created by bell labs to encrypt signals for communication between Allied forces.
1954 – Slapback echo was pioneered by Sam Philips of Sun Records. Slapback is a tape delay effect used during this time on vocals e.g. Elvis Presley.
1955 – Stockhausen uses ring modulation on his masterpiece ‘Gesang der Junginge’. A ring modulator is a device that multiplies two signals through a ring diode circuit.
1964 – An example of distortion is created by Dave Davies of the Kinks when he slices and punctures his speaker cone.
1965 – Glen Snoddy invents a device to create a fuzz sound. The Maestro Fuzz-tone, the first transistor guitar effect pedal used by Keith Richards on the song ‘Satisfaction’.
1966 – The tape based flanging effect and Automatic double tracking (ADT) are developed by Ken Townsend at Abbey Road Studios on the Beatles ‘Revolver’ album.
1970 – Wendy Carlos and Boob moog develop the vocoder sound for the sound track to the film ‘Clockwork orange’.
1973 – Jimi Hendrix uses a wah-wah pedal for the ground breaking ‘Voodoo child’.
1973 – Roland release a portable tape delay device called ‘the space echo’.
1974 – The most famous use of the vocoder is by Kraftwerk on the song ‘Autobahn’.
1974 – Eventide Harmonizer H910 offers pitch shift and delay. Used by producer Tony Visconti on David Bowie’s ‘Young Americans’
1976 – Peter Frampton uses a talk box on his ‘Frampton Comes Alive’ Album.
1978 – The first digital delay the ‘DMX’.
1981 – Hugh Padgham invents the gated reverb as heard on the drums of Phil Collins ‘In the Air Tonight’.
1983 – The EBow is introduced into the mainstream by country star Stuart Adamson.
1988 – Time stretch is introduced using the Akai s950.
1990 – Alesis Quadraverb, the bestselling digital reverb unit of all time.
1996 – Protools uses DSP (digital signal processing) effects as standard.
1998 – Cher uses Autotune on the song ‘Believe’.
1999 – Korg releases the Kaoss Pad.
2001 – The first convolution reverb is produced by Audio Ease ‘Altiverb’.