Tremolo picking classical guitar

Bhael

Location: Newcastle, UK

Joined: Feb 18 2010

Usually tremelo would be played p a m i, so in order of thumb, ring, middle and index finger. This generally fits into double time (e.g. 4/4). The three stroke version that Choogly refers to also fits into this, although could be in triple time (6/8) or use triplets. Flamenco tremelo is different, as it's designed for a different kind of music.For this I believe it goes p i a m i, so five strokes rather than four. In this case I guess you could use your little finger. Perhaps you could post the link?

auriplane

Joined: Sep 06 2008

What song?

kenor

The Cardsharp

Location: Czech Republic

Joined: Jun 04 2009

Per Olov plays classical tremolo, that means P for the bass note and AMI for tremolo. If you intend to learn it, be warned that it's a very difficult technique and will take loads of time and patience to learn. However, it definitely pays off. Just start practising VERY slow - if you start fast, you will screw up your technique, you will stuck and soon find out that your tremolo sucks and you cannot change it. And once you are stuck it's very difficult to re-learn the tremolo. Possible though. Personal experience.

Bhael

Location: Newcastle, UK

Joined: Feb 18 2010

As kenor said, it's thumb-ring-middle-index-thumb-ring-middle-index (four strokes). I've personally never seen five stroke tremelo outside the world of flamenco, which itself is usually only played with a thumb and three fingers (though you can play it with four fingers if you want). In my experience it's easy enough to learn tremelo, but extremely difficult to master (which would take days of focussed practice). Saying that, it's still one of the hardest techniques to learn. I personally never felt inclined to learn flamenco tremelo, but try it out by all means. This is an example of well executed classical tremelo: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIzKsNIRrV4.

natenmn

I haven't had a chance to trim my hedges recently. Thanks for visiting anyway...

Location: United States

Joined: Jul 17 2009

Some good practice advice that helped me with my tremolo:

1. Go slow at first and pay attention to the evenness between each stroke.
2. Start off practicing your pami or piami patterns with all strokes on the same string. Doing this will help you to hear what you play a bit better so you can even it out.
3. Primarily practice on strings other than the 1st. Practicing on the first string can give a bad habit of wildly flailing your fingers around which may cause you to unintentionally hit other strings when you play tremolo on say the 2nd or 3rd strings.
4. Count out each stroke with numbers that differ from the number of total strokes for each pattern. Basically count to 3 or 5 for a four stroke pami pattern, and count to either 4 or 6 for a five stroke piami pattern. The reason for this is to create an even smoothness.

Here is a little tab that I just made that takes all four of those into account. The numbers on the top are what you would either count out in your mind or physically say. The letters on the bottom correspond to your fingers (p = thumb, a = ring, m = middle, i = index). While this isn't the only pattern you should practice, it is extremely helpful for developing proper technique.

     1  2  3  1  2  3  1  2     3  1  2  3  1  2  3  1     2  3  1  2  3  1  2  3
     P  A  M  I  P  A  M  I     P  A  M  I  P  A  M  I     P  A  M  I  P  A  M  I  
E||--------------------------|--------------------------|--------------------------||
B||--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--0--|--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--2--|--3--3--3--3--3--3--3--3--||
G||--------------------------|--------------------------|--------------------------||
D||--------------------------|--------------------------|--------------------------||
A||--------------------------|--------------------------|--------------------------||
E||--------------------------|--------------------------|--------------------------||

Counting each stroke out in the way described is probably the thing that helped smooth out my tremolo the most. The reason for this is because the mind will usually start off by making a small natural timing gap between each PAMI set. It would sort of be like "PAMI PAMI PAMI PAMI" with the spaces representing timing gaps. Counting a four stroke pattern in threes would make it "PAM IPA MIP AMI" thus preventing you from continuously and unintentionally adding a small timing gap between the I of a previous set and the P of a new one. Eventually as you get faster and faster you'll stop physically counting (you wont be able to keep up XD) and gaps will disappear.

I hope that made sense lol. It is a little difficult to explain in text.

Unfortunately, tremolo is something you need to practice a shitload... and is something you can easily lose. I used to be proud of mine, but now it sucks horribly D:

musenji

Joined: Feb 02 2010

Awesome, awesome post, Nate. Thoughts on the four points:

1. Yep, and just for backup, every single tremolo tutorial I've read--from teachers or professional guitarists--says that focusing on evenness is more important than trying to go fast. A perfectly even tremolo at 100 BPM sounds much better than an uneven tremolo at 150 BPM. (The same general rule goes for all playing, really.)

2. Solid. Taking away other notes and the bass/melody dynamic makes it a ton easier to focus on evenness. Try to see how close you can get to a uniform sound from all four fingers.

3. I have the flailing problem. You DON'T want to get it yourself, so definitely do this step.

4. This does take a while to explain but he's right. My teacher also had me practice scales with accents every 2, 3, 4, and 5 notes, so that one finger doesn't accent stronger than the rest by habit.

Basically, kanshiketsu89? Nate is smart. Listen to Nate. haha

Once you've got all those things down, then move on to having your bass note on different strings from the "melody" notes.

kanshiketsu89

Anime Clef

Joined: Aug 13 2010

Yup, just eyes and ears. I've already made some lonlonjp tabs that way so I know I'll nail this one too. In fact, I'm already half way there. :P I can send you the tab when I'm done (although I don't plan on tabbing the whole song, just the patterns I like best).

natenmn

I haven't had a chance to trim my hedges recently. Thanks for visiting anyway...

Location: United States

Joined: Jul 17 2009

kanshiketsu89 said

My flailing is so bad that I actually thought you can only do tremolo at the 1st string.

That is pretty funny XD. Don't worry, though, the flailing issue is something I think everyone has a problem with a first. When I first started, it was very frustrating to practice on the 2nd string and hit the 1st over half of the time by mistake XD. If you persevere through it you'll soon appreciate being able to tremolo on any string.

In fact, right hand technique is so key here, that even playing completely open notes but focusing on evenness is probably better than trying to learn an actual song too soon. With this in mind, once you get to a level of evenness, you can just do right hand PAMI or PIAMI practice while watching tv or browsing the net or something... assuming you still count along and give it enough focus over whatever else you are doing to try to improve smoothness.

musenji said

My teacher also had me practice scales with accents every 2, 3, 4, and 5 notes, so that one finger doesn't accent stronger than the rest by habit.

This is something I kind of wish I had done when I first started playing. It is great advice, and I have heard quite a few people stress doing this or something similar.

kanshiketsu89

Anime Clef

Joined: Aug 13 2010

Hehe, I realized it's funny as soon as you've mentioned practicing on the 2nd string. :D But say, that counting thing is killing me. Can't I just keep the rhythm with my foot instead? You know, like, stay silent for 1 and 2 and then step with my foot for 3. It feel better that way but I'm wondering if it's ok... And one more thing, would it be better to practice tremolo on an acoustic western guitar? I'm asking cuz the western guitar has a slightly smaller gap between the strings so it forces me to be even more precise.

kanshiketsu89

Anime Clef

Joined: Aug 13 2010

Ok, tnx natenmn. You really helped me out. Turned out to be a pretty useful thread thanks to you.

kanshiketsu89

Anime Clef

Joined: Aug 13 2010

Tnx auri, that helped. My flailing is the result of never seriously practicing tremolo. I just did it here and then for a couple of minutes. Now I'm paying a lot more attention to it all. Btw, I checked out her "How to play 19th century guitar music", the woman rocks. You should have told me about her before I claimed that there are no awesome female guitarist out there. XD