Difference between revisions of "Vibrato"
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Revision as of 13:01, 10 April 2014
Vibrato is a simple concept but a difficult technique to master. It involves moving the pitch of a note up and down repeatedly, to give a sustained note a bit more emphasis or livliness. The actual pitch of the note is in constant motion, moving up and down but never staying absolutely still.
Contents
Common Methods
Bending
The most common way this is performed is by doing very small bends (see Bending. The same way you do a quarter bend, you start your vibrato. While bending is typically designed to reach a certain pitch (and possibly return to the original), vibrato only wants a small deviation from the original pitch but to start to return to the original pitch as soon as the peak of that deviation is reached. And when the pitch is back to the original, you start to bend up again.
Note that with this technique, you can only go above the original pitch, not above and below. The average pitch of the vibrato is actually above the original note.
One thing to watch out for is that you only bending in one direction. IE, you are always pushing the string away from its natural fretted position, or you are always pulling it. If you push up, then don't simply allow the string to return to its natural position but "pull through" that point and begin bending higher in pitch using a pulling technique, there is an artificial sound to the transition. Picture a sine wave - the high and low peaks are rounded off and smooth. When you "pull through", you don't smoothly approach the low peak but blaze through it. This would be like if the sine wave had pointy peaks on the bottom but rounded peaks on top, like a bouncing ball.
Pushing/Pulling
Where bending is vertical motion, pushing/pulling is horizontal motion. Without actually moving your finger's position on the string, you move your hand towards and away from the bridge. The friction of your finger against the string is actually strong enough to slightly push and pull the string towards and away from the bridge, decreasing and increasing (respectively) the tension on the resonating part of the string.
This technique is difficult to master - it feels like you are going to slide off the fret. In this regard, it's very difficult to get a wide/large vibrato from this technique.
The main benefit to this technique is that you are not simply changing the pitch above the original note but above and below it. Thus, the average pitch of the vibrato and original note should be very close.
Vai's Circle Vibrato
Steve Vai decided using just one of the above techniques was not enough, so he developed a "circle vibrato" technique that combines them both. He's