Using Piano Chord Tremolos In Your Songs As Transitions

Here is a transcript of the video: Good morning. This is Duane. Today I’d like to talk about piano chord tremolos, using tremolos in transitions in songs to make your songs more interesting.

First of all, let’s define a tremolo. A tremolo is a rapid alternation of three or more notes. A trill, you know, is two notes, but tremolo is three or more notes like that. Those are tremolos. See, you just rock your hand back and forth kind of like that. I am not the greatest tremolo person in the world, that’s for sure. Anyway, that is a tremolo. You can use them in transitions. By transitions, I mean you can use them anywhere, but they’re most effective as the phrase moves to another phrase.

Let me illustrate. Let’s say, you were playing Misty. Did you see that? It was a transition. When I get to the end of the phrase, I went like this. I tremoloed that E minor seventh chord and the E flat seventh chord and the E minor seventh chord, then the G seventh chord until it was time to come back in. You see that? Let’s see. What was I going to say? I was going to say something about that, but it slipped my mind.

You can also use tremolos at the end of a piece. Let’s skip to the end of Misty. Something like that. Erroll Garner used to do that fantastically, the guy that wrote Misty. Last chord you tremolo. Then you usually take it up the keyboard, I think, and then did this. He would put a little zipper on it at the end. Let me do it so you can see it. I’m starting at the fifth and then going outward to the root and it puts a little zipper on the final ending. Once more.

Two places. In transitions, like at the end of a phrase or between phrases. Usually, it’s just on one hand because the left hand’s probably keeping the beat like that. That works best if you keep the beat with the left hand while your right hand does the tremolo. As you can see, I’m not very good at that, but that’s what a tremolo is and you can use them in those transitions.

By the way, you can also take a run out ofa tremolo. I started out like this, then I fired up the keyboard. Let me just do it one octave slowly, or two octaves slowly. See? I just took the note I was tremoloing, take the chord I was tremoloing and then bring it up the keyboard. The first chord was E minor seventh, then E flat seventh, then D minor seventh, and then G seventh. Again. That’s it about tremolos.

If you enjoy these little tips, come on over at Play Piano and sign up for our free piano tips. We have a tip most every day. At least several times a week. Knowledge builds on knowledge. If you listen to these tips day after day through out the year, you’re going to learn a ton about music. Thanks for being with me and we hope to se you there. Bye-bye for now.

Here is the YouTube video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n6Rw35kciqE&feature=youtu.be
———————————————————————————–