Just wanted to get your thoughts on developing a consistent tremelo picking technique.
Normally I just lock my wrist and use the elbow motion, but I find it to be spastic and it loses accuracy.
I can never get it up to speed entirely from the wrist…
I know a while back Troy did a short video on the the EVH tremelo method… was there a resolution?
Honestly, I find it strange to elevate my hand entirely and use that approach. …
Any thoughts? Thanks.
I remember seeing EVH do this for the first time and it was like someone planted a grenade between my ears. It just looked so bizarre. So I tried it and, of course, it was incredibly awkward. Fast-forward 15-20 years later I’ve refined the motion relatively well. I’ve even started experimenting with trying it to play actual lines instead of just the usual repeated-note patterns. I won’t say I’m particularly adept at that yet, but I can occasionally peek into another world where it seems like it’s possible.
I think the hardest thing to get used to at first is the string tracking. I’m mostly a UWPS kinda-guy with the base of my thumb generally in contact with the bridge. Eddie’s tremolo technique feels like the complete opposite of my natural mechanic. I first got it to work by sheer experimentation (3-hour sports events on TV are good for this).
However, it always felt like I was making a major switch of “picking modes”. It was so different that to execute the switch, I had to alter my grip, flex the wrist, start fluttering in the air and then “dip” the pick down. I always thought of it like starting an engine on a motor boat out of the water. Not very conducive to smooth playing.
So lately I’ve been trying to keep the same high-speed reflex motion of the wrist without having to do the major grip change and I’ve kinda almost got it working. Again, this is mostly just brute-force experimentation. But over time I find I’m getting the right feel more often than not.
Here’s what my normal grip looks like:
Here’s what it looks like when I morph into “tremolo mode”:
You can see that the base of my thumb is no longer resting on the bridge and that the wrist is flexed just ever-so-slightly outward. For whatever I reason, I’ve always found that cocking the pinky seems to help with this motion. It could be placebo effect, it could be just keeping that knuckle from hitting the strings or something about introducing some tension into the hand to help with the mechanic. I don’t’ really know about that one.
I will say that when it’s working correctly, the hand from the wrist to the fingers feels like one solid, locked-in unit, but not overly tense. The wrist is handling all of the motion, largely through rotational mechanics. When I have it working correctly the motion is really free and easy. I’ve never timed myself but I could probably go several minutes just fluttering away like this (not that anyone would want to hear that).
Hope that helps!
From what I understand from the video on motion mechanics, you should be able to get to pretty high tempos with all approaches, but arm movements from the biceps/triceps are among the fastest. I have serious trouble going over 160 for more than few bars, however I just tried ‘drumming’ on the table with pure wrist deviation and it’s no big deal to keep consistent 8th notes for an entire song at 200+ which would mean 16th notes. Honestly I don’t see a reason why this would not work on the guitar, I mean string tension is really not that much a deal with proper pick slanting. I guess it’s more of a mental blockade or wrong movements altogether.
I am not a big fan of having different picking mechanics based upon strokes-per-string. Ideally, if you can use the same technique for tremolo picking that you use for other phrases, everything tends to sound more consistent, and picking becomes easier. Also, you don’t feel ‘locked-in’ to a phrase because you have ‘honed-into’ a specific picking mechanic.
I would just experiment with different mechanics… try anything and everything, and combinations of all of them.
You may find that the EVH mechanic works well with other wrist mechanics. Or you may find that the elbow mechanic can be used to ‘mix-in’ with your existing mechanics. Try them all… and try them for different phrases. Over time, you may be able to find the ‘goldilocks’ mechanic.
I assume you’re referring to the EVH motion here, not the wrist one you’ve been experimenting with more recently? In this case it’s the forearm that generates the motion, not the wrist. I don’t think Ed’s wrist really moves. The locked-in feeling you’re describing is that arm rotation feeling.
Call me crazy but I kind of would like to hear that! We went to a TV on the Radio show a month back. I don’t really know the band but in a nutshell it’s ambient/melodic indie rock. The guitar player had a killer forearm-style tremolo which he would do for almost entire songs. It’s basically a drone behind the synths and singing. I never really thought of trem as an “ambient” sound but indeed it was pretty cool.
“Tremolo” is just the musical term for picking the same note repeatedly. It’s not a different technique than whatever you would use to pick different notes with each pickstroke.
What I’m getting at is that if you have trouble picking smoothly for any length of time, it doesn’t really have anything to do with tremolo. It’s just trouble picking smoothly for a length of time. This is going to affect any phrase you play that contains sustained picking.
@Maximal’s comments about table tapping are right on. It is an analogy I have used many times. If you can tap on a table faster and more consistently than you can pick, then you don’t have a “speed” problem per se, you just haven’t learned the coordination of guitar movements.
As far as learning those movements, no matter which ones they are, @alexvollmer’s comments about experimentation are right on. These motions are all a little different, and it can take lots of repeated attempts with slight changes here and there until they “click”. But you are definitely looking for a click. It’s not the kind of thing that you work up to slowly over time.
Think of the kind of intermittently smooth, occasionally uncoordinated feeling of learning surfing, riding a bike, juggling, etc. more so than the kind of incremental gains you make with weights and gym exercises. Over time your brain zeroes in on exactly what it feels like when you do it correctly, until you can do it every time you sit down to play.
@Troy you are correct about the motion. It is all forearm rotation, not a wrist-based thing. Thank you clarifying that.
