Tremolo
Five cases to listen to: the same note once struck once, once with strokes across the stem. One head, many strokes.
A stroke across a note stem says the note is not played once but as often as fits into its length. They are the same strokes as on the flag of a short note, only laid across: one means eighths, two mean sixteenths, three mean thirty-seconds. The word is Italian and simply means "trembling".
On this page every case stands twice side by side: the plain note on the left, the same note with the strokes on the right. Listen to both and you hear the same pitch and a different motion. Both are measured — the spacing between the strokes from the sound, the strokes themselves and the number of heads from the engraved image.
The head stays a single one, and the note does not get longer. It fills the same time, only no longer with one stroke but with many.
One stroke
A whole note with one stroke across the stem. The stroke stands for eighths, so the note is divided into eighths and struck as many times as eighths fit into it. On the left the same note without the stroke: a single attack that simply lies there. The pitch is the same in both pictures, and so is the total length.
Two strokes
The same head, now with two strokes. That is the notation for sixteenths, and accordingly the spacing between the strokes halves compared with the first case. Listen to the two pictures one after the other and you hear exactly that: the same note, but the motion is twice as dense.
Three strokes
Three strokes, so thirty-seconds. This is the usual way to write a tremolo that is no longer counted but only heard — for strings the threshold beyond which one speaks of an unmeasured tremolo. In the sound example the strokes are evenly placed; in practice that is left to the bow.
The same strokes, a shorter note
The same three strokes on a quarter note instead of a whole one. The spacing between the strokes is unchanged — that is the proof that the strokes name the note value and not the number. Because the note is shorter, fewer strokes fit into it, and the bar then carries on with three quiet quarters.
Tremolo on a chord
A triad with three strokes. All three notes are struck together and repeated together; in the picture there are still three heads and one sign. This is exactly how piano parts write a chord that should shimmer under the hand rather than lie there once.
What the strokes count
This is where most readers go wrong: the strokes do not say how many times the note is struck, but how short each stroke is. Three strokes mean thirty-seconds — and how many of those fit into the note is decided by the note. That is why the same three strokes appear twice on this page: once on a whole note and once on a quarter. The spacing between the strokes is exactly the same in both pictures; there are simply a quarter as many.
A good engraving therefore never writes a tremolo without a clear note value beneath it. In the orchestra it belongs above all to the strings, where the bow really does tremble; at the piano it is rarer, and there it means a rapid alternation on the same key or the same grip.
What stands next to it
How long a note is and how the values relate: Note values. Other signs that prescribe something within a single note value: Ornaments.
Music symbols · Ornaments · Music notation glossary
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