tremolo guitar music recommendations?
JLR
3,835 Posts
The recent Portishead thread sent me back to listen to Roseland, Dummy and S/T. I need more tremolo guitar sound in my life now. Recommmendations?PS: won't take pictures of monkees as recommendations 
Comments
...patience.
Daniel Lanois - Acadie LP and The Beauty Of Wynona
The Smiths - How Soon Is Now
Bo Diddley
Nancy Sinatra - Bang Bang
Big co-sign, this is probably exactly what you're looking for.
Is there a particular Santo & Johnny LP that is "the one" that I should own? I've heard a few cuts I like but I'd prefer a solid album...
BAN ME
Thank y'all for the recommendations!
I was going to recommend Vai! Nice one.
[former guitar nerd confessional]
I remember reading an interview with him in Guitar Player back in the 80s (ACT LIKE YOU KNEW) where he claimed to go through one Floyd Rose tremolo a week while touring with Diamond Dave. Goddamn, dude. He'd also router out the wood just beneath the tremolo so that he could pull it up even farther, so far in fact that the strings out bottom out on the last fret.
[/former guitar nerd confessional]
on the soul side of things, a lot of Muscle Shoals/Fame stuff has tremelo guitar, i.e. Candi Staton "Evidence"
yet telling...
I really like "In The Still Of The Night", although it's more of a comp of earlier material it has my two favorite songs, "Sleepwalk" and "Teardrop" on it... peace, 'check . . .
The tremelo-iest...
Yep, many. Not all of them are good though... I would stick with Canadian American label.
what would u recommend?
thanks
On both Dummy and the self-titled albums, Portishead did a wonderful job with tremolo. They did what, in my opinion, is the best thing to do, which is, to not overdo it. Tremolo is best enjoyed, like a fine scotch, in moderation.
There is some confusion in this thread as to the definition (or definitions) of tremolo.
First, and in traditional music vernacular -- using my copy of Alfred's Pocket Dictionary of Music - Terms, Composers, Theory as reference -- tremolo is: the rapid repition of a single note. That's like when those bluegrass dudes really lay it on thick; just fucking going nuts on a single note. (Check this video for the realness exposed.)
Secondly, and that which is of interest to you, tremolo is: modulation of the amplitude of a sound (sometimes using a low frequency oscillator (LFO)).
Tremolo then, is the action of quickly raising and lowering the volume of a signal. Like, if you hired DJ Day to sit at the crossfader between your guitar and amp and just go the fuck off while you play. Some amplifiers have tremolo units built-in, and there are companies that make tremolo pedals (Jim Dunlop TS-! Tremolo Stereo Pan being a favorite of mine).
I prefer the tremolo that is subtle. It add a nice quality to a guitar sound, without jumping out of the speaker to tell you what it's doing. When taken to the extreme ("What's the Frequency, Kenneth"), tremolo is a device of novelty. It's the most obvious, glaring thing about a guitar part, and often negates everything else about the riff. (Note: Shadow used a tremolo effect on his drums somewhere on Endtroducing that typifies the "all out" tremolo sound I'm referring to.)
Obvious exceptions include
because Marr turned the novelty on itself and made it something better. Still, you can only write one "How Soon Is Now," otherwise you become "that guy that always does that thing" to his guitar, which, everyone knows, gets old. (This is why the fair only comes to town once a year.)
The good examples of tremolo use,
as James pointed out, are found in abundance on the soundtrack circuit, which Portishead owes a lot to. Morricone used it with style. John Barry as well. Just about any electric blues, country, or rock album has its share of tremolo. The Stones, check. Newer rock/pop stuff as well. Lanois, as mentioned, including his work with Willie Nelson, is wonderful. PJ Harvey (the Dance Hall at Louse Post record she did with Parish especially). Steven Street productions (his guitar sounds in general are some of my favorite) are fine exaples of how to use the effect.
Tremolo is often confused with vibrato, which by deinition, is, a rapid fluctuation of pitch slightly above and below the main note. So, where tremolo effects the volume of a note, vibrato effects the pitch of the note.
What Ross was refering to, the Floyd Rose Tremolo Bar, is a device that effects the pitch of a sound. Often referred to as a "whammy bar." And what cock-obsessed, zit-faced, angst-ridden teenage dude doesn't listen to Steve Vai and not want to grab his whammy, fall on his knees in front of his bedroom mirror (with his bedroom door securely locked), stick his tongue way out, and just go nuts?
It would make more sense to call it a Vibrato Bar, but I guess that just sounds stupid.
To add another layer of confusion, there is another effect that is a combination of tremolo and vibrato where sound is bounced between the stereo spectrum, causing a fluctuation in volume on each separate channel and (when listened to in stereo) causes a warbling of pitch. This is often referred to as "doppler," "stereo tremolo," "rotary speaker," or "Leslie???."
Leslie is a type of speaker. A big wooden box with a spinning woofer in the bottom and a spinning horn in the top. The box has slats cut into it, so when the speaker spins, sound shoots out of the slots. This causes the doppler effect for listeners. Leslie speakers were used in association with the Hammond, Wurlitzer, and Rhodes pianos/organs back in the day. In fact, Portishead's song "Rhodes" is, as the title implies, a Rhodes piano played through a Leslie cabinet.
I used to have a Hammond, two Leslies, and a Rhodes (space constrainsts forced me to sell everything except the suitcase Rhodes). It's quite a wonderful device, and I'd encourage you to check one out in real life sometime. Many churches have Leslie for their organs. You can see one in the Portishead NY video as well.
Depending on how the engineer mics the cabinet, Leslies can sound quite stunning.
If you've the space and the interest, Leslie's can be used for any number of things. (See 764-Hero's song "Leslie," where they run what sounds like the entire song through the speaker.) You can use the speaker as an outboard device. Route any sound from your mixer through an amp that powers the Leslie, and, with mics, bring the signal back. They are beautiful.
To be clear, though, they are big and heavy and loud. It's like have a coffin with two dead bodies sitting in your studio. Nice for setting a plant or candle on top of, though.
Most effects programs have a rotary speaker setting in them, modeled after the Leslie. Most people settle for an effects unit instead of trying to deal with something as big and overwhelming as a Leslie. But nothing compares to the real thing.
Don't get me started on elctroplates...
I remember when "Monster" came out, I was like:
Paz....'Ruiz
This is the Santo & Johnny...
Also, check out Little Walter's "Blue and Lonesome" on Checker. Hard tremolo blues!