Tremolando

Tremolando

Tremolando is something that really boomed in the Romantic era, which is why it is under this category on the blog.

On a bowed string instrument, it is a quick up and down scrubbing of the bow off the string... demonstrated here:

You'll notice the guy refers to this as a tremelo. He's not wrong, it's just that the Higher music course specifies "Tremolando" is the word. They are used interchangably.

Here's a segment of Tremolando strings from Bruckner's 5th Symphony, movement 1:

You can see the notes have 3 short diagonal dashes on their stems - this instructs the player to play using the Tremolando technique. This particular segment of music runs from 3:25 to 4:12 in the video - listen and watch the bows of the string section.

Tremolando is one of the great big Romantic music giveaways - the composers loved the tension it created and the way the players could get a peach of a crescendo/diminuendo going. See if you can spot it in Symphonies and Concertos from this era as you listen to them.