In music, tremolo is a technique for playing drums, keyboards, strings and other musical instruments. It involves the rapid repeated repetition of a single sound. In addition, this kind of melism can be expressed in the rapid alternation of two non-neighboring sounds, chords, intervals, harmonies. An example of such a phenomenon is a game of 8 in 1/16 notes, instead of 1/2.
Sound continuity
Playing the balalaika using the technique of interest to us consists in uniform and quick alternation of strokes of the right hand finger up and down the strings. Such a game resembles singing and creates a feeling of continuity of sound. Tremolo is the main technique for extracting continuous sound.
When playing with "trick" the main movement becomes the rotational movement of the forearm. As a result of this, a bent brush produces an oscillatory motion.
If a musical note does not have indications of tricks or arpeggios, while it contains long notes or a series of short notes, connected from below or above by an arcuate line, tremolo should be used as a related performance.
At the end of the league, tremolation should be interrupted for a moment. After a short caesura stop, the musician proceeds to perform the next section of the play, as if taking a breath.
Electric guitar
In this case, tremolo is a quick short movement of the mediator up and down. In this case, the plectrum with the same force pulls the string in two directions of motion. To achieve great speed, the hand relaxes as much as possible. In most cases, tremolo is used along with the delay or distortion effect.
The most actively used in the case of heavy music, including death metal, black metal, thrash metal. Also, this feature of the game is found in alternative rock and punk rock.
To achieve maximum sound density in the background instrument, this technique is used in post-rock. Some electric guitars have a tremolo system that allows you to change the tone of the sound using a special lever.
Drums
In the case of the snare drum, tremolo is a drum roll. Here, the technique is characterized by a rebound of the sticks from the surface of the drum. Each hand in a row makes several quick hits on the rebound.
The hands alternate. The rebound is played by pushing the sticks into the drum immediately after the first hit. The pressing should not be too strong and not too weak, it should be controlled. To achieve the correct tremolo on the snare drum, the drummers train the rhythm of the rebound and the number of strokes for each hand.
On high-altitude hydrophones, such as bells and xylophone, tremolo is played with single alternating strokes of each hand. In this case, the brush must be relaxed as much as possible to achieve greater melodicity and smoothness, and the performance becomes easier.
Other varieties and features
“Performing tremolo” - this phrase is fully described by the term-adverb “tremolando”. Vocal tremolo is called a singing defect, which is associated with forcing the voice and inability to form upper-register tones and transitional sounds. Such an effect occurs when singing "not with your own voice."
The tremolo on the violin is performed with distinct short bow movements with a relaxed brush. The bow from the strings bounces thanks to the elastic brush, this allows you to make another movement. Actively used tremolo violinists such as Francois Prime and Andri Marto. Tremolo on domra is the main method of extracting long-lasting sound.
Sound is extracted due to the rapid alternation of the plectrum strokes on the string up and down. There are various classifications of tremolo, but usually distinguish: ulnar, carpal and combined tremolo. In each case, the corresponding parts of the hands are most active. Evenness is the most important characteristic of a tremolo.
In this case, we are talking about the same duration of the plectrum strike on the string up and down. Reception tremolo without fail is used in the cantilena, since it requires sound coherence and a long duration. On a classical guitar, tremolo is produced thanks to repeated strokes with two or three fingers on one string.