Tremolo

[gcoover]

Not that this pot needs any more stirring, but what about the doppler effect of swinging or moving the entire instrument through the air or around a microphone? Alistair Anderson does this with great effect on a note to note scale, and Tony Rose used to do an amazing version on a much grander scale swinging his EC in huge arcs over his head during the song "The Bellringing", making the concertina sound like real church bell change ringing. Maybe it's not technically vibrato, although there is a pitch shift. Maybe just "doppler"?

 

And although not technically a bellows shake, John Kirkpatrick sometimes rhythmically hits the end of his melodeon for a "bunga bunga" effect (his words, not mine!).

 

Perhaps we need a special thread on squeezebox effects and cheap tricks?!?

 

Gary

[Rod]

You say potato and I say potahto, You say tomato and I say tomahto

Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto, Let's call the whole thing off!

Doug

 

It's a matter of definition not pronunciation. I may say tomato and you may say tomahto but if it's a beetroot we're both wrong. What's mostly being described here is bellows shake. It works well, the effect is a valid technique and it's pretty unique to hand held free reed instruments. It does seek to emulate classical techniques described for other instruments but why not just tell it how it is?

 

So the next time you're in a session with a fiddler who wouldn't recognise second position if it jumped up and bit her/him on the nose (notice politically correct reversal of gender to throw feminists off the scent) to demonstrate bellows shake on the fiddle.

 

I would be more than happy to call 'tremolo' on the concertina 'bellows shake' and even happier to split the difference and call it 'bellows tremble'. This all started with me suggesting that there seemed little evidence of it's widespread application no matter what we choose to call it !

 

The resulting waffle should be served with a very large dollop of fresh cream.

[Rod]

You say potato and I say potahto, You say tomato and I say tomahto

Potato, potahto, Tomato, tomahto, Let's call the whole thing off!

Doug

 

It's a matter of definition not pronunciation. I may say tomato and you may say tomahto but if it's a beetroot we're both wrong. What's mostly being described here is bellows shake. It works well, the effect is a valid technique and it's pretty unique to hand held free reed instruments. It does seek to emulate classical techniques described for other instruments but why not just tell it how it is?

 

So the next time you're in a session with a fiddler who wouldn't recognise second position if it jumped up and bit her/him on the nose (notice politically correct reversal of gender to throw feminists off the scent) to demonstrate bellows shake on the fiddle.

 

I would be more than happy to call 'tremolo' on the concertina 'bellows shake' and even happier to split the difference and call it 'bellows tremble'. This all started with me suggesting that there seemed little evidence of it's widespread application no matter what we choose to call it !

 

The resulting waffle should be served with a very large dollop of fresh cream.

 

Confusion. My three line reply to Tallships posting above has ,for some strange reason, been implanted as a penultimate paragraph attributed to Tallship. Undoubtedly the error is mine, for which I apologise. I sense that my computer is now sick to death of this topic and is trying to discourage me from proceeding any further with it ! Do I hear a sigh of relief ?

[Dirge]

 

I agree that there are times and places for technical correctness, but that one must occasionally allow for the fuzziness of non-techie language.

I would add that vibrato and tremolo are not only physical phenomena, but also playing techniques that are used for certain effects.

 

I play the mandolin (European style, as opposed to Bluegrass) and I also played the violin as a youth. So for me, tremolo is "what you do on a mandolin" and vibrato is "what you do on a violin." Vibrato, i.e. pitch variation, comes naturally on the violin, because it has no frets, and can thus handle the microtonality involved. Tremolo, i.e. amplitude variation, comes naturally on the mandolin, becuase it has a loud attack and fast decay, so each repeated stiking of the strings produces a new peak amplitude - but the frets dictate that the pitch remains constant.

 

However, I see a further difference. Tremolo on the mandolin is the standard technique for rendering slow-moving melodic passages or long, held notes. Vibrato on the violin, however, is an embellishment for effect.

(Modern violinists seem to use vibrato all the time, as if it were the standard technique. But this was not always so. In Baroque music, the polyphony emerges more clearly when the notes are steady. Romantic period music requires the violin soloist to use vibrato most of the time to make the solo violin stand out against the orchestra. So this vibrato is also used for effect.)

 

My practical definition of "tremolo" would be: "A playing technique that allows instruments with a fast-decaying tone to appear to play sustained notes."

And my practical definition of "vibrato" would be: "A playing technique that allows an instrument's sustained tone to be varied for effect."

 

Obviously, the concertina does not need tremolo in this sense, because it has a sustained tone. Any variation of the tone will be for effect, not out of necessity. For practical purposes, the "bellows shake" on a concertina is equivalent to a vibrato on any other instrument with a sustained tone, e.g. violin, flute, oboe, clarinet...

 

Of course, you can emulate tremolo on the violin by moving the bow very quickly up and down on one note, or you can get a fast amplitude variation on the flute or whistle by "rolling an R" while blowing. This is done for effect, because there is a more basic way of sustaining a note.

I suppose the equivalent technique on the concertina would be working the bellows quickly in and out while playing a slow-moving tune. I've heard this on the bayan, and it should be easier on the concertina, with its smaller mass. Only on EC or Duet, of course - it wouldn't work in the bisonoric world!

 

Cheers,

John

I liked John's reply here; and I think it is fundamentally right; what is technically tremolo should be viewed as vibrato, so what you then call it is less than clear...excellent thought-provoking insight, John, if I may say so.

[RatFace]

Whatever you call it on the concertina (and I would call it tremolo because it's fundamentally about varying the volume, even though the pitch variation on in the mid range of a concertina is about 10 cents between min and max volume, so it's probably classifiable as real vibrato too, but mainly as an unwanted side-effect), I don't do it because I think it just sounds bad. I freely admit that's a personal preference, influenced by my musical experience... but when I hear those wobbles it just makes my brain feel like it's wobbling too.

 

For the same reason, swinging the concertina around results in a sound that is just unbearable, to me.

[Dirge]

Whatever you call it on the concertina (and I would call it tremolo because it's fundamentally about varying the volume, even though the pitch variation on in the mid range of a concertina is about 10 cents between min and max volume, so it's probably classifiable as real vibrato too, but mainly as an unwanted side-effect), I don't do it because I think it just sounds bad. I freely admit that's a personal preference, influenced by my musical experience... but when I hear those wobbles it just makes my brain feel like it's wobbling too.

 

For the same reason, swinging the concertina around results in a sound that is just unbearable, to me.

I'd call it tremolo too in honesty; I just liked the idea that it was being used for exactly the reason vibrato usually is and vice versa.

 

I don't use it either; very occasionally I'll tense the muscles of the leg the instrument's resting on to get a subtle fast wobble as an experiment but I can't think of anything I play where it has 'stuck'. I don't hate it on principle but it doesn't seem to add anything to the stuff I play. But what would Boermusik be without that prominent hand shake tremolo they do?

[Jody Kruskal]

Whatever you call it on the concertina (and I would call it tremolo because it's fundamentally about varying the volume, even though the pitch variation on in the mid range of a concertina is about 10 cents between min and max volume, so it's probably classifiable as real vibrato too, but mainly as an unwanted side-effect), I don't do it because I think it just sounds bad. I freely admit that's a personal preference, influenced by my musical experience... but when I hear those wobbles it just makes my brain feel like it's wobbling too.

 

For the same reason, swinging the concertina around results in a sound that is just unbearable, to me.

I'd call it tremolo too in honesty; I just liked the idea that it was being used for exactly the reason vibrato usually is and vice versa.

 

I don't use it either; very occasionally I'll tense the muscles of the leg the instrument's resting on to get a subtle fast wobble as an experiment but I can't think of anything I play where it has 'stuck'. I don't hate it on principle but it doesn't seem to add anything to the stuff I play. But what would Boermusik be without that prominent hand shake tremolo they do?

 

I love you Dirge for saying "it doesn't seem to add anything to the stuff I play" (my opinion exactly) and following that with "But what would Boermusik be without that prominent hand shake tremolo they do?" In the concertina world, "bellows shake" does seem like the best terminology to clearly describe how bellows instruments do tremolo/vibrato (IMHO).

[JimLucas]

It's a matter of definition not pronunciation.

Exactly. And for better or worse, there happen to be several different "definitions", or several distinguishable effects, all of which are commonly defined as "tremolo". Several are given on this Wikipedia page.

[JimLucas]

In the concertina world, "bellows shake" does seem like the best terminology to clearly describe how bellows instruments do tremolo/vibrato (IMHO).

Definitions. Definitions. Here we go, again.

If I remember correctly, back when I participated in the newsgroup rec.music.makers.squeezebox I was taken to task by accordionists for calling that vibrating variation in pressure (Rod's "tremolo") a "bellows shake". A true "bellows shake", I was told, involved rapid reversals of the bellows.

[chris]

Hi

perhaps we need a new name for the effect that I'm sure most people really mean in respect of concertinas

chris

[Wolf Molkentin]

perhaps we need a new name for the effect that I'm sure most people really mean in respect of concertinas

Might make sense to draw an "internal" distinction then (perhaps anyway):

 

the Boer-type [i add: though unidirectional and therefor false ] "bellow shake" on the one "hand" and the vibrato-substituting tremble useful with slow tunes (which I feel encouraged to add to my own playing) on the other.

Edited September 9, 2011 by blue eyed sailor