How To Make Piano Runs Out Of Tremolos

Hello again, this is Duane with some more Good Stuff You Really Ought To Know.

You know what a tremolo is. It is a rapid alternation of a group of three or more notes. A trill of course is two notes, but a tremolo would : you’d plug in three or four notes, probably the way your hand works is the best : it’s probably easiest with four notes. Grab any four notes that you want, doesn’t matter what they are, could be all white notes or black notes, does not matter. I have F, A, B, and D. This is with my right hand. I can tremolo all those and then I can shoot up piano runs out of that tremolo. I have my damper pedal depressed, by the way and all I do is break up the bottom, middle to the top.

I’m using 1, 2, 3, 5 in fingering, by the way, then I pivot my hand so that my thumb comes under my fifth finger and I play the next the same notes, and then I go on up as high as I want to go and I could come back down, and then I can stop anywhere I want and tremolo some more, in other words, if I start as tremolo, I can go up here and tremolo then go up there, and tremolo, come down and tremolo, I can pause, you see that, at will. I am just going up and down based on those four notes.

What do you do with the left hand? You can do whatever you want, you can play the melody of the song, say the melody goes B, A, G. “Mary Had a Little Lamb ,” whatever, or if it is appropriate, you can play an octave in your left hand on the root of the chord. This is a G7th chord, G9th chord, which it is. I’d probably play a G octave, so I can do that sort of thing. My right hand can do all the running and the tremoloing, and my left hand can just function as a bass or my left hand could create rhythm. You see that?

There are some ideas, some more Good Stuff You Really Ought To Know, tremolo-fired runs. See you next month with another idea.

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