Tremolo

What it is

Tremolo is produced by moving the bow back and forth very rapidly on the string, with each stroke covering only a small distance. The individual bow changes happen too fast to be counted, and the result is a continuous shimmering sound rather than a series of distinct notes. It sits in the bowing section of the dictionary.

The word is Italian for "trembling". The sound has an unsettled, vibrating quality that is unlike anything else in the string repertoire.

Tremolo is a bowing technique and should not be confused with vibrato, which is a left hand technique that oscillates pitch. Tremolo repeats the note; vibrato colours it. Use the free chromatic tuner to check yourself on this.

Two kinds

Unmeasured tremolo is the common form. The player bows as fast as is comfortable without counting the strokes. The speed is not specified and does not need to align with the beat. This is what tremolo means unless the score says otherwise.

Measured tremolo specifies the exact subdivision, usually sixteenth or thirty-second notes, and the strokes must align with the pulse. It is written the same way but with a tempo and subdivision that make counting possible. This is more demanding, because evenness and alignment both matter.

Reading which is intended is a matter of tempo and context. If the indicated subdivision is fast enough to be uncountable, it is unmeasured in practice.

How it is produced

The stroke happens near the tip, using a very small amount of bow, typically an inch or less.

The motion comes from the forearm and wrist rather than the whole arm. The upper arm stays relatively still. Trying to produce tremolo from the shoulder is exhausting and slow.

The bow hold must be relaxed. A tight grip makes rapid direction changes impossible and produces a stiff, uneven tremolo that tires the arm within seconds.

Contact point and pressure are held constant. The only variable is the rapid reversal.

What goes wrong

Tension. The most common problem by far. The player grips the bow, locks the wrist, and produces a tremolo that is slow, uneven and physically exhausting. A relaxed arm can sustain tremolo for long passages; a tense one cannot manage eight bars.

Too much bow. Students instinctively use more bow than necessary, which limits speed. The stroke should be very short.

Wrong part of the bow. Tremolo near the frog is difficult because the stick is heavy. The upper third is where it works.

Uneven speed. The tremolo starts fast and slows as the arm tires, or fluctuates audibly. In an orchestral section this is very obvious because the players do not match.

Losing the pitch. Because the attention goes to the bow, the left hand can become imprecise. In sustained tremolo passages the left hand still has to be accurate.

How it is notated

Tremolo is written as slashes through the note stem, or above a whole note where there is no stem.

Three slashes is the most common marking and indicates unmeasured tremolo. One or two slashes indicate a specific subdivision, eighths or sixteenths respectively, and are usually measured.

The word tremolo or trem. may appear as well.

The musical effect

Tremolo creates tension, energy and instability. A sustained note played tremolo sounds urgent in a way the same note held plainly does not.

It also thickens texture. An orchestral string section playing tremolo produces a dense wash of sound that fills space without any single line dominating.

Combined with sul ponticello it becomes the standard sound of dread in orchestral and film writing.

At quiet dynamics it can be atmospheric and shimmering rather than tense, which is a very different effect from the same technique.

Where you meet it

Tremolo appears from the Baroque period onward but becomes common in the Romantic era and remains standard in orchestral writing today.

It is extremely common in film and game scoring for its tension-building associations.

Students meet it early in orchestral playing, often before it has been formally taught, which is why so many players develop a tense tremolo that has to be unlearned later.

How it is taught

We start with the bow hold and the arm, checking for tension before any speed is attempted.

Then slow repeated bow changes near the tip, gradually accelerating while the student monitors whether the arm stays relaxed. The moment tension appears, the speed comes back down.

Sustaining is trained separately from speed. A student who can produce four seconds of fast tremolo before seizing up has not learned it yet.

The endurance problem

Tremolo passages in orchestral writing are frequently long, sometimes many bars, and endurance is the limiting factor for most players rather than speed.

A relaxed forearm can sustain tremolo for a considerable time. A tense one seizes within seconds and the sound degrades audibly as the arm fatigues. This is why tension is treated as the primary fault rather than as one fault among several.

The test is not whether a student can produce fast tremolo. It is whether they can produce it for thirty seconds without the speed or evenness changing.

Tremolo in an ensemble

An orchestral section playing tremolo does not need to match stroke for stroke, since unmeasured tremolo is deliberately unsynchronised. What it does need to match is speed and density.

If half the section is bowing significantly faster than the other half, the wash of sound becomes uneven and individual players start to be heard. Section leaders set the speed and the rest match it by ear.

Measured tremolo is different and does need to align precisely, which is why it is far less common in section writing.

We teach private and group violin lessons across Duluth, Buford, Milton and Buckhead. Bring bow technique like Tremolo to a first lesson and we will build the plan around it. book a no-commitment evaluation lesson or call 470-789-2422.