Guitar

The guitar is a stringed musical instrument. It is generally played with the fingers of the left hand{{ref|rhlh}}. The right hand plucks the strings with either the fingers or a plectrum, (guitar pick). The sound is produced by vibrating strings, which in turn resonate the body and neck.

Guitar culture

The guitar has come to be called many different colloquial names over time such as: box, guit-fiddle and axe. The pitch bend arm found on many electric guitars has also had slang terms applied to it, such as "tremolo bar", "whammy handle" or "whammy bar". The latter two slang terms led stompbox manufacturers to use the term 'whammy' in coming up with a pitch raising effect introduced by popular guitar brand "Digitech".

Related Topics:
Slang - Stompbox - Digitech

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Interestingly, Leo Fender, who did so much to revolutionize the modern electric guitar, also created much confusion over the meaning of the terms "tremolo" and "vibrato", specifically by mis-naming the "tremolo" bar on his guitars and also regarding the "Vibrolux" amps. Vibrato is a variation in pitch, whereas tremolo is a variation in volume. On Fender products these effects do the opposite.

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A capo (used to change key without changing fingering) is sometimes called a "cheater".

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A Slide, (bottle or knife) used in blues and rock to create a 'gliss' or 'hawaiian' effect.

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