Again, some more Q&A from you fabulous readers. If you have a music & technology-related question, email me at ev@12RODS.com.

Q: I go to live shows a lot. I see lots of people that play guitar during the shows I go to. These guitar players I watch stomp on these little colored boxes on the floor. When they stomp on these boxes the sound of the guitar seems to change right before my very eyes! What the heck is going on? Am I going crazy?

A: Don't worry, you're not going crazy. Those little colored boxes on the floor are called guitar pedals, and they do indeed change the sound of the guitar. They are sturdy little metal boxes which enclose special electronics that modify the sound of the guitar electronically. These pedals are made by many different manufacturers, and can change the sound of the guitar in all sorts of ways - adding a delay or echo, a "chorusing" effect, reverb, or most popularly, overdrive and distortion. When the guitarist stomps on the box with their foot, they are actually turning that specific effect that the box is designed to do on or off. The guitarist plugs the guitar into one of these boxes (which is usually run by a 9-volt battery) and then from there plugs it into the guitar amplifier. Guitar pedals can be chained together in different ways to get a huge array of sounds while playing, all available and changeable from the feet! Some guitar pedals have strange names; from the "RAT" to the "Big Muff" to the most disgustingly named "Rocktron Purple Haze Octavider". I recommend watching local guitar greats Ed Ackerson from Polara or Mike Michel from Tugboat for examples of some real mastery of guitar pedal use on stage.