I have been working little by little at tremolo since I started mandolin about 1 1/2 yrs. What a struggle to make it happen. I have read and watched video lessons. I just can't get into the whole metronome step by step approach with scales and such. I want to learn the technique with songs. Here is a video of where I am right now. I hear it played by many so effortlessly. They say stay loose. I agree but my arm just turns into rock after a few seconds. It would be great to be able to turn on and off the tremolo when needed. Mine has to stay on the whole tune or it all falls apart. How about some feed back on what has helped you with this bear of a technique. Bob
Bob, my teacher told me to practice tremolo until I hate it. Maybe after I perfect double stops. . . .
Just watched your video. Looks to me like you'll nail the tremolo if you relax from the right shoulder down.
Hi, Bob. I'm still working on learning to produce a decent tremolo, so take my comments with the proverbial box of salt. Here's what I see: on all the non-tremolo notes you are playing with a nice, soft, flexible wrist. As soon as you start tremolo, your wrist goes straight and stiff, and it looks like you are producing the stroke from your elbow and perhaps even your shoulder rather than continuing to use your wrist. "Ashokan Farewell" is, of course, a slow piece. When you play something with faster notes, do you pick from your wrist, or your elbow? At a certain speed of picking do you transition from using your wrist to stiffening it, or is it just when the dreaded tremolo is needed? I wonder if the problem you are having switching it on and off smoothly is that you are using totally different groups of muscles to produce the sound, rather than just amping up what you are already doing. Hate to say it, but every video or written explanation I have come across about learning tremolo suggests what a friend of mine refers to as "spending the afternoon at the metronome spa." (Makes it sound a tiny bit more appetizing, no?) I have been using the method suggested by Marilynn Mair in her book, where you play four quarter notes, then eight eighth notes—all with down strokes only—then 16 sixteenth notes using a down-up, then repeating the whole process, on each string, ad nauseum. Yes, with the metronome. She suggests starting at about 50 bpm. The benefit of this is that you have very little time to tense up with just four beats of sixteenths, and if tension is starting, you can release it playing the next set of quarter notes. By building speed gradually, without sacrificing technique, Im hoping this will get me where I want to be. I'm also hoping that I will just wake up one of these mornings with a perfect tremolo, and that one of my husband's lottery tickets will be a winner. But, if you don't buy tickets, there's absolutely no chance of winning. I don't know if the metronome is the ticket or not, but careful practice, starting slowly, probably is. If scales send you up the wall, could you find a tune you could do this with?
Bob, some observations and thoughts after watching your tremolo video (I do like Ashokan Farewell, and you did make it sound as nice as it should sound): In the beginning you were doing short duration tremolos, which I have trouble with too. It looked like you were attacking the strings a bit like Caleb Klauder (find him on youtube playing Innocent Road - he absolutely destroys that mandolin with his tremolo). Anyway, it looks like you get a few strokes in and the pick kind of snags. a) Are you digging the notes out with each stroke or are you just brushing the tip of your pick across the string? I can't really tell, but it looks and sounds like the former. The latter technique allows a smoother, faster tremolo. One thing I often do in practice is to try to play a tune picking over the fretboard without making any clicks. That really demands making shallow brushing strokes with the tip of the pick. b) Do you have a really loose, floppy grip on your pick? I think you want to be able to feel it wobble back and forth (a little bit) as you make your up and down strokes. c) That kind of snag happens to me when I am actually thinking about how to make a good tremolo as I am doing it. A friend told me once (in a different context): don't think, just do it; if you're thinkin' you're stinkin'. And as Sherryc said, if you practice until you're sick of tremolo, eventually the technique of doing it will move from your frontal lobes down into your lizard brain and you won't have to think about it. Much like you don't have to think about every muscle you have to use and coordinate to eat with a fork - or chopsticks, believe it or not. d) One odd thing I read or saw somewhere has helped me overcome that snag on a short tremolo -- as I approach the tremolo in the tune, and I feel like I have to think about that tremolo, I try to think about making the second stroke of the tremolo. Don't worry about the first stroke, it's the second stroke that sets the pace, so it is the important one. I don't know exactly why that seems to work for me. Maybe I'm just strange. Ok, then you played a verse with continuous tremolo and that sounded pretty good. I think that reinforces my thought c), above. You get past that first short intentional burst and your brain says 'ok, I can do this, just leave me alone and focus on the tune' -- and you do. Then at the very end, I am not sure, but it sounds like you turned your pick a bit sideways so you could slide it over the strings instead of actually plucking the strings. Maybe it was just a glitch in the audio. But if you were turning the pick, that does make it easier to tremolo, but it makes that brushy sound. I look at that as a 'special effect' and not as the way I want my tremolo to sound, but that is just my opinion about how I want to sound. The same thought goes with using picks that are more rounded, like the Golden Gate or Dawg picks. I don't like them for me, but many folks do like them (can't argue with David Grisman). All in all, I think your tremolo is coming along quite well and I think you are on the right track. You and I are not much different on tremolo technique so I hope some of this applies for you as much as it did for me.
Hi Bob. Check out this video. Like Louise, I have been using Marilynn Mair's book, only I am going through it at a snails pace. The video basically uses the same method as far as I can tell. If you are a visual learner, it might be more helpful than a book. By the way, she uses a metronome . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XxvD41asKCY
I'm terrible with tremolo. And the worst part of that is that I've seen a few great videos (like the one SOMorris posted) that have great methods for improving, and I've got Don Julin's Mandolin Exercises For Dummies, which likewise has great methods outlined, but I haven't used (read "practiced") any of them. My tremolo has improved more lately, but I know that what is really required is ass-power: I really need just need to sit my butt down and get to work on it for a few months in order to get over the hump. R. A. P., your tremolo is not that terrible, and I enjoyed your playing. I don't have anything to add re: tips for tremolo per se because I'm not good at it and flounder a lot myself. I'll say that I believe Louise and Henry have both done a good job of spotting important areas of improvement. One thing I will add, though, is that your pick stroke directions - your plucking method, shall we say, I find pretty confusing. I wouldn't be able to do it that way, and I'd have a really hard time moving back and forth from tremolo doing it your way. Where these things are concerned, there are basically two ways I play Ashokan Farewell as regards pick direction. It's a pretty slow waltz, so to find the groove with my right hand I find it easiest to play all downstrokes in that melody as one way. That would be a downstroke on every eighth note (two downstrokes for every beat). The second way does use a few upstrokes, as I use a different right hand groove for the tempo. The would be a downstroke on every beat and and upstroke only between the beat where an eighth note is called for. While this may seem a small thing to some folk, it is not a small thing for me. I approach right hand technique and pick strokes very seriously - meaning that I've thought about it a lot and I incorporate some logic in my approach to it. It's such an important aspect to me that I've often thought of making some videos to see if my thoughts might help others with it. So that's why I mention it here, because it's important for me to know and have a strong sense of where I'm going with my right hand at all times, and I like to know where I land coming out of a tremolo and where I'm going with the very next stroke afterward, etc. That may or may not be a lot to think about, but hopefully it might help somehow. You are really doing well with the tremolo so far, so be encouraged and have fun learning
I love hrdrckgrl, now apparently known as ModalMixture, and her tremolo explanation. yabadaba-dabadaba, yabadab-dabadaba. I think she is playing a Monroe Morgan mandolin. That or a Michael Kelly. Seems to work pretty well. I bet she has upgraded by now though.
To all you newbies that replied concerning my tremolo work, all your thoughtful observations are appreciated very much and will be taken into consideration. Based on all the comments and watching my own technique in the video I now know all my tremolo is coming from my forearm and elbow. This is I supposed why all the tension comes in. So I decided to follow the advice from SOMorris and watch modalmixture. I see the wrist is we're the tremolo comes from. So I am going to try taking this tedious journey to develop a real tremolo. I am going to set a goal to work with the metronome 15 minutes a day following the prescribed routine. I hope I can stick with it. I really want this in my bag but I really dislike this kind of practice. I like to just play tunes. So can I achieve this goal in 2 months ? I hope so. I will post some progress reports if I make any. Below are a couple of video links that look helpful if your also working on this techniques.
In all the rest of your playing you are doing a beautiful job using your wrist, so you have a good foundation to work from.
I just saw a thread on the main forum (a member's video of him playing Take Five). In that thread, in one of the responses, is a video of Evan J. Marshall playing "Variations on a Theme by Beethovan". Amazing tremolo. I looked him up on YouTube and found his channel. Here is another video from him where he explains his technique at the start: I will be watching from the sidelines while everybody else tries to make this work for next month's bonus tune of the month.
Man, duo style is cool. I aimed for a touch of that when I did the Bojangles intro - a little tremolo, too. How about a link to that thread, Henry? And what do you mean by "bonus tune of the month"? Am I missing something?
Take Five video thread: https://www.mandolincafe.com/forum/s...With-Tablature If you post your TOM video early, you have to work on a bonus tune. Right? Recuerdos is just a tune, right? Me, I already started on something else.
I'll throw my two cents in. First RAP, it's not as bad as you think. I thought you did a great job for a "newbie". I'll agree that your wrist tightens up when you start, but other than that, I thought it wasn't bad. Here's my trick that has helped me. Try playing softly or quite. I'm a night owl and my family is not, so I play a lot when they are asleep. When I first started playing tremolo, it was a nightmare because you think that you've got to play loud and fast. But personally it's the opposite. Playing soft and loose is the way to go, and the best way to understand that is trying to play and "not wake the baby" mentality. Play like your/someone's baby is in the next room. For some reason I always loosen up (from head to toe) and my tremolo improves greatly. Try it out and see if that helps. Otherwise, I think you are heading in the right direction even though you think you're not. Otto
Thanks again to each of you for all the advice. I have been working each day this week on much of what was recommended. The mandolessons tremolo lesson has been my main practice method. Yes working with the metronome. 1/4 notes then 8ths then 16ths. gradually turning up the speed of the metronome. I'm trying to play softer, from the wrist instead of the elbow. i feel like I have made progress on doing this on the open stings. I can work up to 135 bpm and play fairly consistent 16th notes. It sounds like tremolo at that point. I can switch open strings back and forth a little easier. It comes from the wrist with much less tension. All that is great but taking that and trying to make music out of it is a whole different world than the practice on open strings. So I made a video of my first attempt to put these new techniques into a tune. Please feel free to provide any pointers. Bob
That's a marked improvement I think, and so much better than I can do! Danny Boy sounds nice with the tremolo. It looks to me like you are using a nice combination of wrist + forearm/elbow now.
Very noticeable improvement in a relatively short time. Looks and sounds more relaxed. Good work.
I might be off base here, but I think I can see something that might help you improve a bit more. BUT, I might be completely wrong as well. BUT, I also want to make it clear that you've improved a great deal from you last posting. You are right on your improvements with your wrist and elbow, but I'm noticing your pick hold seems a bit too rigid, too tight or whatever name you want to use. I would bet if you moved your pick on your index finger more distal (towards the end of your finger) you'd loosen that pick up more and it would glide a lot better and you'd get that sound we are all searching for. So instead of holding the pick in between the first and second knuckle (at least something close to that), hold it between the first knuckle and the tip of your finger. You almost want to have a feeling like it's going to fall out of your fingers. I think that's why your sound kind of muffles a bit right in the middle of your tremolos. Again, just observations; no expert here, it looks like you're getting tensed up because you think you're not moving fast enough. I think tremolos are only possible by being confident and being super relaxed. Which is almost impossible for us beginners. I'm at the 1.5 year mark as well on playing Mando, and I think you're doing a terrific job. Don't be discouraged in anyway, it's a learning process just like life, my 20's can atest to that. I would stop worrying about speed right now and work more on being totally relaxed, maybe go half as fast as you possibly can comfortably. Once you can figure that relaxed, gliding, smooth sound out, I would start working on speed and so forth. I truly believe that a loose grip and relaxed from shoulder down is going to help you tenfold. Again, you are doing Awesome and in no way are you behind just because you've only been playing 1.5 years. This is a lifelong lesson to even come close to our hero's in the mandolin world Keep it up, and keep us posted. Nice work R.A.P.
