Vibrato Drills -By Drew Peterson In addition to working on your vibrato techniques, these drills have the added benifit of improving coordination between your hands and strengthening your fingers. Basically, they're pretty simple- you play an entire scale, vibratoing every note. Sounds easy, right? try it. First, start with a classical vibrato. (For those of you unfamiliar with this technique, simply keep your finger firmy planted on the string and move the fingertip front to back parallel to the fretboard. (You're not actually moving that fingertip, but rather shifting the center of pressure- effectively the same thing, but the latter is easier on your fingertip as there's less friction between the fingertiptip and the string) Due to the nature of the frets, you'll get a slight raising and lowring of pitch as you do this. (Physics 101 explaination- there's a certian amount of space between any two frets on the neck of the guitar- approximately a half-inch at the 12th fret, for instace. Now, i'm sure you understand the basic function of the frets- you push down between them and the leading fret (the one closest to the bridge) acts as a hard "pivot," almost against which the string can vibrate cleanly- it makes getting the intonation of a pitch that much easier, and improves sustain. However, when you're vibratoing, it serves a secondary function- as a sort of "fulcrum" for the string, with the string being a "lever" of sorts. I know, pretty far out, but bear with me. Now, as you remember from high school physics (and most likely elementry school science), the force excerted by a lever can be seen as the force applied times the distance from the fulcrum to the point at which the forceis applied. Now, the force applied to the string is virtually constant- enough to displace a wire of a given thickness from it's resting point slightly above the fret down to the fretboard (this is a bit of a simplification, as the force required increases exponentially as you approach the extreme edge of the space between the frets, but within the range you're going to be "fretting," the force can be considered constant. besides, i'm not good enough at calc anymore to work out the actual formula.) So, all that you're changing is the distance at which the force is applied. Since F(t)=F(a)xD, and the applied force [F(a)] is effectively constant, the tension [F(t)] should increase as the distance to the fulcrum (D) increases. So, as you move the center of pressure of your fingertip away from the leading fret, the tension in the string will increase, and as you move it towards the fret, the tension will decrease. And since tension is a variable in determining pitch of a vibrating string, you will hear a slight modulation in pitch- what we guitarists term a "vibrato." Give it a try.) Now, here's what you do- play a scale (any scale will do) slowly, applying a classical vibrato to each note. Play it slowly enough so you have time to do a clean vibrato, and concentrate on getting your vibrato to start IMMEDIATELY upon strinking the note. for example, in the key of A minor, |---------------------------------------------------------5~--7~--8~--| |---------------------------------------------5~--6~--8~--------------| |-------------------------------------5~--7~--------------------------| |-------------------------5~--7~--9~----------------------------------| |-------------5~--7~--8~----------------------------------------------| |-5~--7~--8~----------------------------------------------------------| This isn't too hard at extremely low tempos, but as you increase the speed, it becomes nearly impossible. So why do it? Three reasons- first off, your vibrato will improve tremendously. It'll be stronger, cleaner, faster (when you want a fast vibrato), and more accurate. Second, this is an amazing workout for your fingers- you'll need all 4 fingers to execute this excersize (if you don't use all 4, you're just cheating yourself), and it's a fairly muscle-intensive drill. Go easy at first so you don't hurt yourself, but with some time your fingers will be much stronger and more accurate. Third, once you can play a vibrato-d line at a brisk tempo, imagine how much easier a non-vibrato line will seem by comparison? Since you won't have to put in the extra effort vibratoing the note, you'll trick yourself into feeling like you have more "time" to execute the fingerings, and your accuracy will improve correspondingly. And as an added bonus, if you get to the point where you can play a blazing line while giving each note a vibrato, you can really scare other guitarists. :o) Of course, don't stop here. Apply this to other scales and picking excersizes. Also, there are nearly infinite ways to vibrato a note. For example, do it with a blues vibrato (a very slight rapid bend and release). If you have a floating bridge, vibrato with the bar- paml it and give it a slight shake with each pitch. Or flick the bar up with your pinkie a la Steve Vai or John Petrucci for a super fast exaggerated vibrato. Or, flick the bar down. Or hit the bridge with your palm as you pick to generate the same effect. or rest your palm against the bridge and push against it very slightly, vibratoing it that way. Or hell, there's nothing to stop you from trilling within the fret to rapidly move between two "pressure pints," giving an extremely fast, light choppy vibrato (this doesn't work so well higher up on the neck, but you could always go legato and tap with the pick, or something). Or, so some combination thereof- like alternate between a classical and a blues vibrato, but flick the bar up on every 5th pitch. Go nuts. Hope these help your vibrato and fretting techniques, and hope the physics description of a classical vibrato wasn't too boring... Enjoy! :o)