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EBow

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An EBow
Playing the EBow on a Fender Telecaster

The EBow or ebow (brand name for "Electronic Bow" or Energy Bow) (often spelled E-bow in common usage)[1] is a hand-held, battery-powered electronic device for playing the electric guitar, invented by Greg Heet in 1969. Instead of having the strings hit by the fingers or a pick, they are moved by the electromagnetic field created by the device, producing a sound reminiscent of using a bow on the strings.[2]

The EBow is used to produce a variety of sounds not usually playable on an electric guitar. These sounds are created by a string driver which gets its input signal by an internal pickup which works like a guitar pickup. Its output signal is amplified and drives the other coil which amplifies the string vibrations. With this feedback loop the player can create a reminiscent string vibration.

By varying the EBow's linear position on the string, the user can change the sound due to the changing string harmonic along different positions of a vibrating string. Fading in and out by lowering and raising the EBow is also possible. Furthermore, starting with the current generation of EBow (PlusEBow, the 4th edition EBow), the user also gains an additional mode known as harmonic mode, which produces a higher harmonic sound instead of the fundamental note. This is achieved by reversing the signal phase to the driving coil which dampens the string's fundamental frequency and creates higher harmonics.

Many different artists have used the EBow in a wide variety of musical styles. One of the first notable users was Genesis guitarist Steve Hackett, who used the device on "The Carpet Crawlers" from the band's 1974 album The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway. Another early pioneer of EBow playing was Max Sunyer, who used it in a 1978 live album "Iceberg en directe", recorded and released in Spain Picap. It was used later on by Bill Nelson, who introduced it to Stuart Adamson of The Skids. Adamson went on to use it with Big Country. Contemporary Christian performer Phil Keaggy is also a prolific user of the EBow, more notably in his 1979 instrumental release The Master & The Musician, which features many different sounds created with the EBow. The EBow is frequently used by Radiohead guitarist Ed O'Brien in live performances of songs such as All I Need. It has also been used on Opeth's 2001 album Blackwater Park, in order to create ambient background melodies.

Besides its appearance in Rock and Jazz music, the EBow also made its way in the domain of contemporary art music, being used by John Cage in his harp piece A Postcard from Heaven (1982), Karlheinz Essl in Sequitur VIII (2008) for electric guitar and live-electronics, Elliott Sharp on SFERICS (1996), Arnold Dreyblatt in E-Bow Blues (released 1998) and David First in A Bet on Transcendence Favors the House (2008).

While the EBow is not normally used with the electric bass guitar, which has heavier strings, Michael Manring (who uses light bass strings) has persevered, and it features heavily on his 1995 album Thönk. He has even been known to use two at once.

Although the EBow is most commonly played on the electric guitar because of the ease of use and the responsiveness obtainable from the pickup, it has also been used in applications with the steel-string acoustic guitar. For example, Pink Floyd guitarist David Gilmour used one on his Gibson J-200 acoustic in the 1994 song Take It Back to great effect. Generally an acoustic guitar gives a limited response for varying reasons, including the density and spacing of the guitar strings. But despite these limitations, using an EBow on an acoustic guitar gives a rich, flute and clarinet-like tone with a slow-swelling response. Composer Luciano Chessa employs EBows regularly in his music for solo Vietnamese dan bau. Furthermore, an EBow can also be utilised on a grand piano (with depressed sustain pedal) in order to create sustained sinusoidal sounds as it was used by Olga Neuwirth in Hooloomooloo (1997)[3] and Karlheinz Essl in Sequitur XIII (2009) for extended piano and live-electronics.[4]


Notable uses

See also

References

  1. ^ The EBow FAQ
  2. ^ Sound clips of the EBow
  3. ^ Stefan Drees, Perspektivenwechsel. Tonraum-Deformationen durch Instrumentalklang-Verstimmungen bei Olga Neuwirth (2001)
  4. ^ Karlheinz Essl, Sequitur XIII (2009)
  5. ^ Andy Timmons
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