Tremolo study is a technique that enables the player to sustain a repeating melody note while playing a bass accompaniment. One the most famous pieces illustrating this technique is Recuerdos de la Alhambra by Francisco Tarrega. Other notable composers such as Augustin Barrios Mangore and Federico Moreno Torroba also employed the technique. This lesson is going to take a simple etude by Matteo Carcassi who looked like this...


 
The tremolo effect on the guitar is produced by playing the bass note of a chord with p [thumb] and then performing the melody note, typically a drone, with the a [ring] m [middle] and i [index] fingers respectively.
 
We're going to take the first eight chords of Etude no.2 in A minor by Carcassi and perform it as it was written first. Here are the chord voicings we'll be needing.
 
Once you have these under your fingers, so to speak, we can put them to practice. The manuscript and tablature below represent one of the many ways you can perform this piece. Karl Scheit edited twelve of Carcassi's etudes and had fingered eight different approaches to performing this study. So this is just one of many ways to perform it. Since going through these eight variations, I also applied Mauro Giuliani's studies for the right hand, which are kind of mundane in and of themselves, to this etude to make this things a bit more interesting. Enough already, here's the original notation before adding tremolo.
 


Once you've established this melody in your mind's ear, we can start to take liberties with the harmony and doing amazing things with it. You tremolo will really be solid if you build it by talking just two out the four notes per beat. Let's take the very first Ami chord you saw at the top left of the chord glossary. Now play p on the open A on the downbeat [1] and the m finger on open E on the and [+] of the beat. By all means practice with a metronome until your fingers are trained to perform this set of motions so you can hold a conversation with someone while playing and not falter in either rhythm or tone. The next step is filling in the blanks in each measure. Now add the a and i finger on the open E string. Our new pattern will be p a m i. So here's the first few chords with the tremolo!
 

 
If you're not careful, your tremolo will end up sounding like it's galloping. Make every effort to practice evenly and slowly and the speed will happen naturally once the motions are permanently etched in your technique. Also try to sound each pitch with the same dynamic, not allowing any note to be louder or softer than the others.
 
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