UNPLANNED DOWNTIME: 12th Oct 23:45
Vibrato exercises - need some tips.
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Ok - I've been playing for something like 25 years or so (self taught), and I'm fairly happy with my vibrato feel so I've never really thought much about it until a pal (maybe an ex-pal now!) pointed out that my finger vibrato is fine, if I bend and vibrato towards the top string, it's fine but if I bend towards the bass strings, I always reach for the trem (yes I know) bar, or don't apply any vibrato at all. I'd never noticed.
So I'm making a concerted effort to push to bend towards the bass side and apply my vibrato technique, and I've discovered I've basically got zero control. I hit the pitch accurately, but my vibrato frequency is wayward (generally way faster than normal), I can't control the return to pitch and I now hate myself.
Has anyone got any decent exercises to try before I sell up and take up knitting? It' reallyu feels like I need to unlearn... Maybe an hour or so with a teacher might be beneficial.
Cheers all.
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In other words, don't try and bend the string upwards towards the ceiling by moving your hand perpendicularly to the fretboard in an upwards direction. Instead, swivel your hand so that the tip(s) of the relevant finger(s) move upwards, in an angular motion. Then by unswivelling and swivelling, you get the vibrato.
Think to a time in the future, when they inevitably get round to releasing a tutorial video on your playing style and the presenter goes "an interesting feature of Dodge's playing is that when he bends downwards he uses vibrato but when he bends up he uses the bar...it lends some interesting contrast to this passage he played on blah blah blah" It's exactly the kind of thing that detailed analysis reveals about the greatest players of all time.
If it's genuinely limiting you, then by all means work on it, but if you're just anxious about it because you think it "ought" to be different, ignore and focus on stuff you really like.
Even playing a simple thing like the melody line from Amazing Grace testing out all of the different parameters you can vary in your vibrato will pretty quickly let you hear what's good and what's not so good.