Learning Tremolo—page 2 |
|
 |
|
 |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
(For those who want to go a bit deeper into this subject, the following is a more general discussion on tremolo.) Have you always taught tremolo in this way? No. At one time, my approach to tremolo was to begin with control and then gradually increase the speed. This is a fairly conventional approach, and in most areas of guitar technique it’s the best way to go. But over time, I’ve become convinced that the right hand needs a more nuanced approach. I notice you say “the right hand” and not “both hands.” Unlike most other instruments, stringed instrument players do very different things with the right and left hands. For the guitarist, an approach that works well for one hand isn’t always apt for the other. For the left hand, I would argue that “control first, then speed” is always a good idea. But for the right hand, beginning with control in some cases can inhibit the ability to develop speed. What makes the right hand so different from the left? The left hand moves and stretches a lot more than the right. It’s easier to feel excess tension in large movements—in fact, large movements tend to dissipate tension. But the right hand tends to stay relatively still, and the finger movements in normal playing are far smaller. So it’s easier for excess tension to go unnoticed. By the way, this helps explain why flamenco guitarists often have more raw speed than classical guitarists. They do a lot of rasgueado, which is a larger and more vigorous movement than most other right hand techniques. Further, right movements are almost always more refined than left hand movements. Stopping a string is relatively easy compared to shaping tone and dynamics when sounding a string. The left hand approaches the right hand’s refinement when doing slurs, portamento, or vibrato, but never fully equals it. In a sense, the left hand is a gymnast and the right hand is a dancer. But why is beginning with control sometimes a bad thing for the right hand? Because you can too easily control with excess tension. Beginning with control means playing slowly. At a slow speed you can play accurately in spite of excess tension. Since your accuracy is good, there’s no particular reason for you to notice the excess tension with which you’re controlling the movement. So practicing slowly, you ingrain this excess tension. When you gradually try to increase the tempo, this ingrained tension stays with you, and because it’s ingrained you probably won’t notice it. Instead, you assume you need more practice, and in doing so you further ingrain the excess tension. And so it goes, in a vicious cycle. You tell students to pay particular attention to a. Why? If any one finger is the key to a good tremolo, it’s a. This finger isn’t as naturally coordinated as i and m, and it far more easily falls victim to excess tension. Ironically, m is often blamed for problems that are really caused by a. For example, a common flaw when learning tremolo is that m misses, leaving a hole in the middle of the tremolo. But this miss is often set up by excess tension in a—the a finger curls in too much as it sounds the string, throwing m out of position. I’m more and more convinced it’s a good idea to cultivate a flexible tip joint in a, letting it give a bit as it sounds the string. This is a reversal from what I believed some years ago, and it’s still controversial among some. But for a, at least, it’s a good idea. Interestingly, Pepe Romero has advocated flexible tip joints for years, and he has one of the best right hands in the business. Isn’t it true that anyone who can play right hand arpeggios fluently will have little trouble playing tremolo? For most people, yes. There’s a lot of wisdom behind Segovia’s oft-quoted maxim that tremolo is an arpeggio on one string. So why use tremolo to cultivate the feeling of physical ease that’s so important to right hand technique? Wouldn’t it make more sense to do this with arpeggios, which are far more common in guitar playing than tremolo? In a perfect world, guitarists would cultivate this physical ease long before they get to tremolo. And some do. In the real world, however, most guitarists don’t. I suspect the main reason is that, other than cross-string trills, tremolo is one of the few right hand techniques with all three fingers that relies on speed to be effective. This may seem surprising at first—don’t right hand arpeggios often rely on speed? But when you think about it, most arpeggio pieces in the student repertoire don’t require the speed that tremolo does. Villa-Lobos Etude No. 1, for example, sounds fast at a tempo of 120. Tremolo, however, drags at this speed. So it’s entirely possible that, for many students, tremolo is their first encounter with such high right hand finger speed. In fact, tremolo is uniquely suited for cultivating a better feel for physical ease. We’ve already noted the need for speed, but there’s an additional factor. In most arpeggios, the fingers naturally fall on consecutive strings. In tremolo, however, the fingers must all play on one string, and this is more awkward than playing consecutive strings. So the combination of speed and increased awkwardness makes tremolo a good diagnostic tool for right hand excess tension. Indeed, it can help you detect problems that might fly below the radar in other right hand techniques. And the physical ease you cultivate in pursuit of an accurate and reliable tremolo will pay dividends in almost every other area of right hand technique. You say very little about the differences between hands from person to person. Is this an oversight? I don’t say much about this for two reasons. First, in a written article it’s impossible to account for every individual hand. But the second reason is more subtle, and I’ll use myself as an example. On my right hand, when my fingers are completely relaxed the m finger sticks out a bit from the other fingers. (Perhaps in a previous life I was a New York cab driver.) This, of course, is a disadvantage when learning tremolo, and I spent many hours trying to train it to stay in with the other fingers. But I’m convinced now that this was a mistake. By trying to make it to stay in, I was forcing it into a position that simply wasn’t comfortable. Indeed, I was making a fundamental mistake: I was more concerned with how it looked than how it felt. It’s the feel that’s important—the easier it feels, the better it works. If it feels easiest in a slightly unorthodox position, then so be it. Pardon the pun, you’ve got to play the hand you’re dealt. Having said this, there’s an old saying among airplane engineers: “If it looks good, it flies good.” The same is true with guitar technique. When tremolo feels and sounds good, it also looks good. So no one should justify horrendous looking technique by saying it feels good—particularly those who aren’t yet competent players. What I’m saying is that there are times in advanced study when finding the right feel is more productive than finding the right look. Will this procedure lead some people to make changes in how they hold the guitar? I wouldn’t be surprised if it does. For example, those who become more sensitive to excess right arm tension often find they’re holding the guitar head too low. Raising the guitar head a bit brings down the lower bout of the guitar, which puts the right shoulder into a more relaxed position. Will this procedure alone ensure a good tremolo? Possibly, but this will vary from person to person. Obviously the effectiveness of this procedure depends on the care and intelligence with which it’s carried out. Further, many people will need to improve their finger independence between m and a. There are a number of ways to do this. For example, Greek concert guitarist Antigoni Goni had this approach: “At the time that I was practicing tremolo for the first time I was also playing the Segovia scales for three hours every day, insisting on m & a fingerings. I really think it helped a great deal.” While three hours a day of m and a scale work might be a tad much for most tastes, it does illustrate the importance of developing independence between these fingers. I like to use music for this. A favorite of mine is to play Sor’s Op. 6 No. 1 with the p, m, a, m pattern—for me, this piece is just long enough for a good workout. I’ve also used the scales in thirds from Giuliani’s Op. 1. Rasgueados are also excellent for developing finger independence. As always, players should carefully monitor themselves as they do any rigorous exercises. Mindlessly pounding away at exercises can lead to injury. Is there anything new in how you teach tremolo? Probably not. People have been playing and teaching the guitar for a long time, so it’s unlikely I or anyone else will discover something new. I’d like to think I’ve weighed alternatives and explained things somewhat better than most, which after all is the prime job of a teacher. But I’m not the best or final judge of that. Ultimately it’s up to each student to decide if what I’ve written works. And that’s as it should be. |
|
|
|
go to page 1 of Learning Tremolo Having trouble with the triplets in Recuerdos de l’Alhambra? Click here for help. |
|
|
|
 |
|
|
|
phone: (216) 691-5949—e-mail: augustineregal@yahoo.com
|
|
|
|