Wah-wah (music) - Wah-wah in Trumpet and Trombone Playing

Wah-wah in Trumpet and Trombone Playing

Although perhaps best known from the electric guitar's wah-wah pedal, the sound is much older, having been significantly developed by trumpet and trombone players using mutes in the early days of jazz.

Joe "King" Oliver recorded "Wawawa" in the 1920s. Bubber Miley, Cootie Williams, trumpeters, and Tricky Sam Nanton, trombonist, of the Duke Ellington Orchestra pioneered in using plunger mutes to create wah-wah sounds.

The effect was used in the 1930s on "Sugar Blues" by Dixieland trumpeter Clyde McCoy, who built a long career around the sound, and even today has a popular wah-wah pedal by Vox named after him. "The Fat Man", the first hit by Fats Domino, features Fats singing vocal trumpet wah-wah. Another New Orleans singer, Chuck Carbo frequently performs vocal wah-wah. "Tuxedo Junction," a signature tune for the Glenn Miller Orchestra, uses the effect prominently in its trombone parts.

This technique has also been used in contemporary music. Karlheinz Stockhausen notates the use of the wah-wah mute in his Punkte (1952/1962) in terms of transitions between open to close using open and closed circles connected by a line (Erickson 1975, p. 73). Stockhausen regularly used it in many of his works since the 1960s, including his monumental opera cycle Licht.

The animated Peanuts film and television specials used a trombone with a plunger mute to stand in for the voices of adults, who were always off-screen when they spoke.