Rock Guitar Lesson 8

Use Whammy Bar to Spice Your Guitar Playing

A whammy bar (it's also named a tremolo arm or tremolo bar) is a lever near the bridge usually installed

only on electric guitars. It allows to change a pitch of all the strings simultaneously and get it back to the

normal that gives a plenty of possibilities to perform cool guitar tricks, sounds and effects.

Despite whammy bar so often called as tremolo bar, arm or system iit's noway connected to tremolo guitar effect

and it doesn't help to produce any tremolo.

Not all the electric guitars have a tremolo bar system. It depends on specific model of the guitar.
For example Les Paul, Fender Telecaster guitars usually do not have it.

Basic whammy bar tricks are dip and dive.

To perform a dip, take any note or power chord and while it rings slightly push and release a whammy bar.

watch video example

To perform a dive do the same thing as with a dip but now press the lever much deeply so

the strings will dramatically reduce a pitch.

watch video example

Raising pitch also possible in regular whammy bar position but instead of pushing on the lever it should be pulled up.

Also the whammy bar is a perfect instrument for performing  vibrato. With the bar you can vibrate natural harmonics

that is impossible to do with finger vibrato, or vibrate whole chords.

Tab notation for whammy bar tricks:

In simple guitar tabs dip and dive have following notation:

It also can be marked as text within a tab such as: dive w/bar, dip w/bar and etc...

It's really not that important to play exactly how it's written in the tab,

be free to play with your own style, what sounds good is good.

In magazines, books and advanced guitar tablatures, dip and dive marked as:

The number near the line or curve mean how low or high string pitch should be changed with a tremolo arm.

(the same thing as "n" character in simple tablatures)

Also it can be just a line without  a number.

In this case the author meant that the pitch change doesn't have a concrete parametre.