Hi what do you call it when a singer is holding a note and varying the pitch up and down rhythmically by about a tone or semi-tone for a pretty long time?
Vibrato. Although the range is usually a bit less than a semitone. Or do you mean a trill? That is noticeably different and the range can indeed be up to a whole tone.
I checked on youtube and it looks like it is “vibrato” - thanks.
I know exactly zilch about music, but I was going to guess either vibrato or tremolo.
So now, can someone tell me what tremolo is (as opposed to vibrato)?
A couple of options to help define a tremolo.
- Tremolo varies the volume whereas vibrato varies the pitch.
- A tremolo would best be understood if “heard” as if you were to use the two mallets and hit the same note on a marimba or glockenspiel in rapid succession.
To expand, while it’s usually called vibrato in singing and most instruments, it involves changes in both pitch and in volume. A true tremolo can be heard on a pipe organ, when the air supply to the pipes varies periodically. Sometimes the whammy bar on a guitar is also incorrectly labelled a tremolo bar.
Unless it’s a pop singer, in which case it’s called urban yodeling.
Or jawhammering.
Moved to Cafe Society.
Colibri
General Questions Moderator
A semi-tone or tone is much too wide a pitch range for vibrato. Perhaps you were thinking of a narrower range, which is? What you describe is a trill, not vibrato.
Yep.
The terms tremolo and vibrato get used a bit inexactly at times. If you want some more technical terms, vibrato is frequency (pitch) modulation, and tremolo is amplitude (volume/loudness) modulation.
Tremolo basically sounds like turning your volume knob up and down rapidly to make a echoey sort of tone, without actually altering the pitch. Vibrato kind of makes the note sound “thicker,” by wobbling in and out of tune, while tremolo makes the note sound more, echo-like, to me, but without the thickness. If you scroll down to sound examples in this Wikipedia article, you can click on a vibrato and tremolo example to hear the difference.
There’s a good real-instrument example on a guitar (Youtube video). At about 1:00 in, he starts demonstrating the difference, but I just linked to the beginning of the video, in case you want to listen to his explanation. You can also get tremolo or vibrato effects (or a mix of the two) through amps or pedals.
The OP was essentially a question posed to my team in an academic competition back when I was in high school. I knew the answer, because my mother loathes vibrato with the heat of a thousand fiery suns, and would say, “She/he has a vibrato,” in approximately the same tone of voice many Dopers would say, “She/he tortures kittens.”
I do too in most cases, only because many (wannabe) singers use vibrato to cover up a lack of ability to hit the correct note.
Yeah it would be a narrower range…
A trill sound file from the wiki entry: http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Trill_no-trill.ogg
On a violin, vibrato is done with the left hand, as explained here, and tremolo is done with the right hand (bow), as seen here. And then there are also trills.
Please consider this a nitpick, but a violin tremolo, with involves a rapid back and forth motion of the bow, sounds different from a guitar or electronic one, where the volume moves rapidly up and down. Since the bow reverses direction, the sound of the violin comes to a stop between strokes; an electronic one does not.
Correct. Properly, tremolo means the rapid reiteration of a single note, as in that violin effect or the characteristic mandolin technique for playing a “sustained” note. The electronic effect of wavering the volume is a rough approximation of this sound, and has come to be an informal third meaning of the word (which also means a trill on an interval larger than a second, or between chords).
Yes, I should have mentioned that, too. In keyboard instruments (and mallet instruments, and probably some others), you see the multiple note tremolo or chord tremolo every once in a while. It is notated like this and means to alternate between the two notes (or chords) rapidly. (I’ve always wondered why the trill isn’t described as a tremolo, or why this type of tremolo isn’t just called a “wide” trill or something like that.)
The single-note tremolo is also found on the guitar, especially in surf music (a la the mandolin technique you describe). Think of Dick Dale and his rapid repetition of single notes.