Tremolo
Slashes drawn through a note's stem mean: repeat this note, fast. The number of slashes tells you how fast — and it's the fourth thing that can happen near a stem, after a beam, a stack of noteheads, and a vibrato wave (Stage 2, two in a row, two at once, or a wobble).
Reading the slashes
| Slashes | Play the note as | Kind |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | eighth notes | measured |
| 2 | sixteenth notes | measured |
| 3 (or the word trem.) | as fast as possible | unmeasured — a texture, not a rhythm |
On a whole note, which has no stem, the slashes float where the stem would be.
Hear it — two slashes
abcjs plays it written out; on the page you'd see a half note with two bars through its stem.
Between two noteheads — fingered tremolo
The four things near a stem
| You see | It means |
|---|---|
| a beam joining noteheads | different notes, played in sequence (Stage 2) |
| noteheads stacked on one stem | different notes, played together — a double stop (Stage 2) |
| a wavy line beside a note | vibrato — a pitch shimmer, no rhythm (Stage 2) |
| slashes through the stem | tremolo — one note repeated fast (this lesson) |
Try it
Try
On the open A, play a half note's worth of very fast, very small bows near the tip — no accents, no rhythm you could count, just a haze of sound. That's a bowed tremolo. Now try the fingered kind: bow one steady note on the A string and rock your 1st and 2nd fingers quickly between B and C.
The usual mistake
Counting a three-slash tremolo — it's unmeasured, a shimmer, not a rhythm. Accenting the repeats, so it sounds like a machine gun instead of a haze — keep it dead even. And confusing the two kinds: slashes through one stem repeat a single note; slashes between two noteheads alternate two.