Tremolo (trem., strings): meaning and use in music

rapid measured or unmeasured reiteration of one note, alternation between pitches, or an instrument-appropriate roll; the attested text abbreviation is trem.

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Music symbols

  • Tremolo, one stroke: music notation symbol placed on the note or its stem.
    Tremolo, one stroke
  • Tremolo, two strokes: music notation symbol placed on the note or its stem.
    Tremolo, two strokes
  • Tremolo, three strokes: music notation symbol placed on the note or its stem.
    Tremolo, three strokes
Abbreviation
trem.

How is tremolo played?

Repeat one note or alternate between the written pitches for the notated duration or marked span. In a measured tremolo, the note value and the total beam level formed by existing beams or flags plus added strokes determine the exact subdivision; the strokes represent the beams omitted from fully written-out repetitions. In an unmeasured tremolo, the marks conventionally request a rapid uncounted result instead, and trem. or a local legend can remove ambiguity; “as fast as possible” is a common notational gloss, not one identical physical speed on every instrument. Strings normally use rapid back-and-forth bow strokes, while percussion uses an instrument-appropriate roll and keyboards or plucked strings use repeated attacks or alternation. On a stemless note the strokes occupy the position of a notional stem. A trill sign has also been used for percussion rolls in some scores, but tr is trill notation, not a textual abbreviation of tremolo. Read duration, new notation and any explicit technique change for the endpoint; neither the word nor the strokes prescribe one universal bowing, sticking, evenness, dynamic or timbre.

How does tremolo sound?

A continuous, shimmering or trembling sustain in place of a single struck or bowed note.

In context

Italian tremolo covers rapid reiteration, alternation between non-adjacent pitches and, in relevant percussion contexts, a roll; it can be measured or unmeasured. Musicca’s Italian entry, Bauer and Ambrosini’s trilingual notation manual and Walther’s historical lexicon independently expand trem., while Gerou and Lusk and Steinberg corroborate its use as text clarifying an unmeasured tremolo. The abbreviation is not a replacement for the graphical strokes, and the related Italian headword rullo remains a separate word rather than an interchangeable textual form.

Music theory and score context

Category
articulation
Function type
articulation
Instruments
strings

See also

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