I don't like the sound of tremolo.

[DavidKOS]

Tremolo's an ornament - a little dab here and a little dab there is music to the ear.

In some styles, yes. Tremolo is an ornament to be used judiciously. If at all, as some folks say for certain music.

In other styles, tremolo is certainly not merely an ornament, but instead is a basic way of sustaining a note, same as for a woodwind, brass or bowed string player.

As you say, this can get boring if it is static and by rote, but like a violinist, a good mandolin player can vary the tremolo's dynamics and tone color and even speed, from slow to fast, measured or unmeasured, etc.

This creates a wide variety of musical expression - and why some mandolin playing sounds like this particular style or another style.

[billkilpatrick]

bratsche - mmm … nice. (Al Pacino wants a meet …)

[Tobin]

In some styles, yes. Tremolo is an ornament to be used judiciously. If at all, as some folks say for certain music.

In other styles, tremolo is certainly not merely an ornament, but instead is a basic way of sustaining a note, same as for a woodwind, brass or bowed string player.

As you say, this can get boring if it is static and by rote, but like a violinist, a good mandolin player can vary the tremolo's dynamics and tone color and even speed, from slow to fast, measured or unmeasured, etc.

This creates a wide variety of musical expression - and why some mandolin playing sounds like this particular style or another style.

Yup. And the long, sustained tremolo (or the entire melody made up completely of tremolo) is what sounds Italian to me. In a shockingly never-seen-The-Godfather sort of way.

[billkilpatrick]

Also, it depends on circumstances - A moonlit stroll back to the hotel in Napoli after a lovely meal, a bottle or two of some very nice wine and the distant sound of a tremolo-ing mandolin would be just what the doctor ordered.

[ralph johansson]

How to use tremolo and not sound italian? Learning "rawhide" is a good start...

Nothing to do with tremolo, at all.

[ralph johansson]

Good point...but

tAnyway I'd love to hear other players comment on how to use the tremolo and not sound Italian.

By staying away from Italian mandolin music altogether (as I did when learning)? I have indeed watched a few videos with Caterina Lichtenberg using that continuous tremolo, into the tiniest hemisemidemiquaver, playing fairly close to the bridge, and I can safely say I've never been even close to that sound. E.g., I like to finish a short tremolo with a gliss, a drop or a snap, completely alien to the classic tradition. Also, already the choice of a flat or creased top instrument will affect the sound or expression you achieve.

[Randi Gormley]

The discussion on the distinction between types of tremolo playing made me suddenly remember when I invited my cousin, who has thrown herself into classical guitar, to come to my mandolin lesson and play with my teacher and me. We were playing something baroque or something with a sustained note that we were messing around with and tremolo-ing to draw it out (yes, I know, tremolo isn't the right style for baroque in general) and she was playing some sort of melody and she stopped and asked how many strokes we were giving each measure. both my teacher and I were mostly just shimmering the note and the two of us were building a wall of sound -- she was expecting tremolo to be our two picks moving as one in a measured and distinct number of notes per beat. It made me wonder if that sort of tremolo was a convention that I had ignored in simply stretching to fill three measures of whole notes. I don't remember tremolo being that precise even playing Italian music during my attendance at Carlo Aonzo's mandolin workshops when we had a whole room doing Callace or Munier. Of course, my cousin came from a family filled with engineers, and maybe it was just her preference for definition...

[AlanN]

Nothing to do with tremolo, at all.

Spot on.

For clear, non-Italian-ated exanples, check out Grisman on

- Knockin' On Your Door - OAITW
- Janice - his solo after the head, from Hot Dawg

[Willie Poole]

In my younger years I learned the tremolo from the master, Buzz Busby, I used it on all of the slow songs that I played but as the years went by I just lost the touch or maybe in my mind I just got bored with doing it but just a few months ago the bass player in my band said he loved the way I did the tremolo and I should use it more often so I am now throwing it in more often, Have to keep your band members happy or they will move on to another band...It does seem to me though that with bluegrass changing the tremolo isn`t used as much as it was in the "Old days"...The pickers now prefer to play a lot of scales and mostly at warp speed...Yes, I am an old man....

Willie

[ralph johansson]

Spot on.

For clear, non-Italian-ated exanples, check out Grisman on

- Knockin' On Your Door - OAITW
- Janice - his solo after the head, from Hot Dawg

Had to pull out the CD and check. Yes, and perhaps an even better example is Dawgola, also on Hot Dawg, featuring that very light tremolo that I like.

[T.D.Nydn]

Nothing to do with tremolo, at all.

You don't think so? I doubt you'll be playing rawhide if you don't have a tremolo..

[Bill Foss]

You don't think so? I doubt you'll be playing rawhide if you don't have a tremolo..

I agree. I've taken enough workshops with Mike Compton to know that he would consider the technique used in Rawhide to be tremolo. Certainly not Italian style tremolo.

[ralph johansson]

You don't think so? I doubt you'll be playing rawhide if you don't have a tremolo..

I am expressing a fact, not opinion. What you hear in Rawhide
is a lot of eighth noes repeated in rhythmic fashion, often accenting the first and fourth eighth note, sometimes tying the middle, first or last two. And that ain’t tremolo. A tremolo may be misurato or non misurato, it can be varied in intensity or volyme, and it may even be glissed; but still the idea of the tremolo is the illusion of one single note played in a trembling fashion.

Really, Rawhide is mainly about rhythm, a sort of fast shuffle. If you want an example of a typically Monrovian tremolo in medium uptempo refer, e.g., to the mandolin intro to A Beautiful Life.

I could play Rawhide, and similar fast numbers, long before I hade developed a credible approach to tremolo. But I’m not attracted to that kind of playing; when I started out on the mandolin I much preferred tunes like Brilliancy and Rutland’s Reel, which feature hardly any repeated notes, at all. 45 years ago I performed this little experiment, in slowing down and abandoning the melody altogether, in the interest of creating more melodic and rhythmic variety, even resorting to the cheap trick of rests.

http://www.flatpickerhangout.com/myh...ic.asp?id=4924

More seriously, on the same page you can find my rendition of Willie Nelson’s Crazy (my motive for posting to a flatpicking site of course was the accompaniment), where the tremolo is used very sparingly. You may not like it, but no one can deny that this is far outside the classical tradition.

[AlanN]

Here's another example of solid, understated, ebb and flow tremolo in a country/bluegrass setting. Byron knows how to manage it....

[DavidKOS]

Spot on.

For clear, non-Italian-ated examples, check out Grisman on

- Knockin' On Your Door - OAITW
- Janice - his solo after the head, from Hot Dawg

Yup, that big round Dawg pick sure doesn't sound like an Italian tremolo!