Complete Tremolo Tutorial: Beginner & Intermediate

[Music] thank you [Music] thank you foreign [Music] there are several different tremolos that you can use for both classical and flamenco guitar the most popular one for classical guitar is the four note tremolo which involves the thumb ring finger middle and index finger or p a m i the Flamenco tremolo or the five note tremolo is almost identical except it throws in an eye finger in between p and a so whereas the classical was p a m i and repeated the Flamenco one is p i a m i the other one that you saw in demo is a three finger three note tremolo which is used often in either one classical or flamingo guitar sometimes even folk music that's transcribed for the classical guitar and that was p m i on repeat PMI PMI now keep in mind these are not the only tremolos out there these just happen to be the most popular ones especially for classical and flamingo guitar but there can be six note tremolos eight note nine notes etc for example famous Flamenco guitars who recently passed away named Manolo San lucar wrote a beautiful piece called oracion which is the style of rondenyang and flamenco guitar that seems to have an infinitely long tremolo it sounds like this [Music] but for the purposes of this video we're just going to focus on these three that I mentioned the classical four note tremolo the five note tremolo for Flamenco and the three note tremolo that can be used in either genre I want to break down the mechanism and setup for the tremolo to make sure that you are off to a good start first of all it doesn't matter what leg your guitar is on I have mine on the right leg for two reasons one because it's easier for the camera and two because I actually do play both classical and Flamenco on either leg it really makes no difference you should be able to play both genres on either leg just pick the leg that feels most comfortable for you at any given point what is important is to make sure that your lower back is Comfortably straight your shoulders are relaxed you're not hunching over at the neck or upper back and then as far as your arm is goes make sure that your right arm is resting comfortably on the side on the edge of the guitar and that you will have natural and comfortable flexion in the right wrist you don't want to have any extension at all that's where you bend back you don't want to have excess flexion because you're going to be compressing the tendons and the and the nerves when you do that that's not good and you always want to eliminate or minimize your or your sort of lateral flexion or all nerves called ulnar deviation all right just be natural okay notice if I let my hand hang like this my thumb is to the left my left or your right of the index fingers to the outside it's not inside like this okay make sure you're relaxed this is the position relationship of thumb to index that you want when you play the guitar so with that said let's start off with our setup so place all the fingers and the thumb on the first string I'm going to sit at this angle so you can see the setup here so thumb index middle and ring fingers not the pinky we're going to leave that one out for now again make sure your shoulder is relaxed notice I have a little bit of flexion in my wrist and my right wrist that amount of flexion is going to vary per person depending on your arm length your hand length just make sure again you're not over flexing and you're certainly not extending so comfortable relaxed good amount of flexion all right the other thing that you want to notice and you want to make sure of is that each finger in the right hand has a natural and comfortable amount of curvature so they're not straight and they're not really too curved it's very comfortable very relaxed so as far as the thumb goes it's really simple make sure that it slides off the string you don't want to be muscling through it it shouldn't feel strenuous it should feel pretty easy so that's the movement of the thumb notice that I'm not doing this I'm not bending at my middle knuckle or my tip joint actually I'm bending I'm moving the knuckle from here from the largest part of my thumb that's where you want to move from okay as far as the fingers go I am an a you want to make sure that they move upward toward the ceiling so I want to go I'm going to use all three fingers you can see I'm going to go upward like that upward okay notice once again the movement comes primarily from my basal joint or the largest knuckle in my hand that's the primary mover of my fingers it's not this I don't want to move from the middle joint if I do that I'm going to get a really kind of ugly popping sound if I move from the basal joint and focus on relaxing my fingers I'll get a nice round even sound that's the sound that I'm looking for so for now you can mute the guitar strings just lightly press your put your left hand on the strings and we can call this exercise one we're just going to move just the fingers upward so for now place the thumb on the sixth string just to get it out of the way okay and we're going to move upward so let your tip joints collapse just think about relaxing your entire finger if it's okay if you hit multiple strings for now so you go all the way up almost as if you want your fingertips to touch your wrist really kind of reach back there okay and you want to do so very very lightly so you want to make sure that you're working with minimal physical effort just enough to get the fingers to move once they get to the top of their movement you want to relax immediately not extend I'm not physically saying I'm literally just letting my fingers drop so let's practice plant we're going to go up relax the fingers relax the tip joints relax the fingers completely let them drop plant play Relax plant play Relax one more plant play Relax the next thing that we want to do is make sure that you relax immediately at the top of the movement so it should be two movements now plant play Relax plant play Relax plant relax obviously I'm using all three fingers at the same time with a tremolo we do use each finger individually right but I want you first to make sure that your finger movement is correct so we want to avoid this okay for exercise two we're going to put the thumb back on the first string we're going to release these fingers they're going to be hanging comfortably and we're going to work on staccato notes staccato means short notes all right so what we want to do is play the note and then mute that same string with the next finger in the sequence so if I play with P I want to mute with a P mute with a a mu with m m with I I meet with P again p mean with a the next exercise is going to be Legato notes Legato notes are long notes we're going to start with the same position just the thumb on the first string and this is the only time we're going to plant after this we're not going to plant any fingers the string the fingers are going to hit the strings from the air like a sweeping motion so first p and now a from the air you can see it in the camera here from the air relax m I from the air P from the air a M relax I relax P relax a relax M relax I relax if you relax make sure that the fingers are moving in the correct manner think of your large Knuckles are you moving the fingers upward from the large knuckles or are you bending at the middle joint make sure you're moving upward from the large knuckles as your shoulder relaxed if not relax it as your lower back comfortably straight are you hunching at the neck make sure to get rid of all that stuff okay so Legato knows I'm not planting at all [Music] right what you can do in practice is alternate your staccato and Legato notes I would recommend practicing practicing both of these on open strings so for example you can go staccato on the first string Legato on the first string staccato in the second Legato in the second so for example like this against staccato avocado second string Legato [Music] Etc and I would recommend going through all the strings it's not often that you play tremolos on the bass strings but go through it anyway because it's going to be more reinforcement the more variability for the technique for exercise 3 we're going to be working on playing with an even sound across all the fingers so what tends to happen often is that the thumb is louder than the other fingers so for example thank you [Music] I'm exaggerating it obviously but we don't want that we want an even sound so in order to do that we have to practice accenting each finger all right so the first thing we can do is accent the thumb like this one two three four thumb ring one more P now we're gonna accent a p a m i p a m now m p a m i p a m now i p i p a m i okay this is a great practice that you can do again across all the strings another thing if you want to up your game a little bit add a little bit of a challenge to your evenness uh playing you can count in threes and accent every third note of your four note tremolo it sounds like this one two three three one two three one two three two three one two three one I'm playing with Legato notes you can do this with staccato or legan notes okay and then the last part is to play evenly really be careful with this one right really listen very very deliberately at your sound where you're going for it above everything else initially is an even volume second you're going for a balanced tone so try to get them all to sound the same or almost identical [Music] okay much easier said than done so take your time with that next exercise we're going to get the thumb moving all right the thumb is going to move up and down the strings and the tremolo fingers are going to remain where they are on the first string we're going to start in the first string so it's going to be p a m i then second string p-a-m-i third string p and so forth here we go and p a m i second string with P third string P fourth string fifth string fifth string sixth string first string fourth third second first okay one quick note about this you wanna make sure to get your thumb moving toward its Target note while you're playing so I don't want to go and then last minute and move the second string last minute move to the third string I want to go like this second string so first string ready with my thumb at the second string move my thumb up to the third string thumb is moving up to the fourth string fifth sixth okay it's a little bit uh of a tongue twister but take your time make sure to set up your thumb correctly next exercise is to keep your thumb where it is and move your fingers okay we're starting the sixth string this time it's going to be p a m i thumb stays on six fingers move to the fifth string okay now fingers move to the fourth string third string [Music] back the other direction third string fourth string foreign quick note I don't expect you to go this fast if you're just learning this so please make sure that you pause the video to work on these exercises a little bit you can unpause of course you can watch this later multiple times to get all the details down but really take your time it's very very important that you operate with is as little effort as possible minimal physical effort in the right hand good tone you want to make sure that your rhythm is even so you want to every time you hear this tremolo you want to make sure you're going uh one two three four one two three four one right like a metronome think of it a second you can think of it as a the click of a second hand on a clock one two three four one two three right very even rhythm next exercise we're going to split okay so we're going to start with the thumb on the sixth string fingers on the first string and we're going to go one time with each of those so p a m i now five and two p a m i four and three five and two six and one and repeat okay again take your time go slowly so now let's add a really simple chord progression to the left hand so that you have a little bit more of a musical context going on here it's not just open strings that can be a little bit boring if you have a tremolo passage from your current repertoire that you're working on maybe you're not too satisfied with with it work on it in the same way that we worked on these exercises today but instead of just blowing through the whole phrase pick just the first chord or the first couple of chords and work on those chords with these rules in mind remember rhythmic evenless eat rhythmic evenness and then minimal physical effort in both hands press very lightly with the right hand with the left hand press very lightly play very lightly with the right hand keep it Loose keep it relaxed avoid tension at least unnecessary tension at all cost all right so with that said here's a quick chord progression that you can use in your playing we're going to start with a minor then we're going to go to G13 [Music] F major 7 Sharp 11. and E add flat 2 or add flat nine okay this is a progression that's common in Flamenco no doubt you've heard that before this is the E Flamenco progression e Spanish phrygian progression it's an A Minor A harmonic minor progression starting on a minor then going to G so one seven six five you can think of it that way okay so what we're going to do is we're going to move the thumb four base notes one one four and then back the other direction three bass notes one two which and then the restart would be that one that's the first time so it's gonna be fifth string five four three two and then three four five four three two three four now we switch chords to the G thirteen and that's gonna be six five four three four five six five four three four five then the F major seven sharp eleven or you can call it an F Flamenco six five four three four five six five four three four five and then our E Flat add flat two we're add flat nine six five four three four five six five four three four five okay now we're gonna add the four note tremolo classical channels once again you can use any tremolo that you want you can use the Flamenco tremolo5 notes you can use the three note tremolo in fact I would encourage you to practice all of them it doesn't have to be in the same day you can do one today one tomorrow and you know with different similar every couple days however you want to do it but definitely try to get all those in there okay so the tempo is going to be like this five four three Etc ready and five four three two three four five four three two three four switch six five four three four five six five four three four five switch four six five four three four five six five four three four five switch six five four three four five six five four three four five okay one quick note you can use for the thumb free Strokes or rest jokes so in this case you've noticed I used some of each so rest free free rest rests free free free the reason you would do that is for aesthetic purposes like static preferences maybe to bring out a particular Melody melodic note so rest jokes are a little bit more present they're a little bit more percussive free Strokes are a little bit lighter the less percussive so keep that in mind there's no right or wrong for classical or flamenco guitar please when you play Don't limit yourself to one or the other pick the stroke the rest stroke or the free stroke that pick the one you use that you want to use based on the sound that you're looking for so I think it's very important and something that is often neglected remember that when you practice these exercises or any of your exercises you want to play with minimal physical effort in both hands so very lightly in the right hand very lightly in the left hand do don't worry about volume initially especially when you're just learning a technique think more about relaxation and the correct movement relaxation and precision as that technique gets better starts to feel more comfortable then you can push your Tempo a little bit you can start playing with your Dynamics or your range of volumes but initially just focus on relaxation so if you want to take your guitar up to the next level then you're definitely going to want to check out the next video up on the screen here that talks exactly about practice strategies

Channel: Diego Alonso Music

Views: 449,578

Keywords: diego alonso music, diego alonso flamenco, tremolo, classical tremolo, flamenco tremolo, trémolo, tremolo guitar technique, tremolo tutorial, beginner classical guitar, beginner flamenco guitar, classical guitar technique, flamenco guitar technique, how to play tremolo on guitar, classical vs flamenco tremolo, how to play tremolo, spanish guitar, flamenco guitar, diego alonso guitar, tremolo classical vs flamenco

Id: XDCV0k5w2wA

Length: 21min 25sec (1285 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 13 2022