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From: Mike Curtis
Date: Thu, 24 Oct 1996 12:02:14 -0700 (PDT)
Subject: Re: tremelo/vibrato, was Re: William Clarke...

On Thu, 24 Oct 1996 j~im.enterprise.net wrote:

>
> On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, Steve & Anne Price wrote:
>
> > On Thu, 24 Oct 1996, Mike Curtis wrote:
> >
> > >
> > > If you look up vibrato, it includes volume and pitch variations,
> > > "A pulsating effect, produced by the rapid reiteration of emphasis on a
> > > tone, and on bowed instruments by a rapid change of pitch corresponding to
> > > the vocal tremelo"; from The International Websters New Encyclopedic
> > > Dictionary of the English Language.
> >
> > Interesting. I thought one was vibrato and one was tremelo.
>
> Correct me if I'm wrong, but dosen't the tremelo bar on a guitar
> alter the pitch by bending the strings? (hence tremelo would be a change
> in pitch).
>
> This has always led me to believe that vibrato, as in hand vibrato,
> was purely a change in volume.
>
> Then again, it wouldn't be the first time that the 'proper' name for
> something was different to the 'common' name (and having said that his
> mind goes blank for a common example, but I hope you know what I mean).
> Or the first time that I've been totaly wrong come to think of it.

All of the above is correct - which is doggone confusing! Tremelo,
tremolo, and vibrato all seem to be interchangeable in various portions of
music. Fender calls their low frequency amplitude modulator both tremelo
(or was it tremolo?) and vibrato. I used to have a Magnatone, which I
believe used vibrato for their true pitch shift vibrato. These days, we
see the electronic effects pedals being called "phasor" (single pitch
shift), "chorus" (dual complementary pitch shift), and "tremolo" (volume
shift). But strictly speaking, the terms seems to be pretty much
interchangeable. So "hand vibrato" is not necessarily a misnomer. I've
never heard it called "hand tremolo" (for what that's worth :-)

-- IronMan Mike Curtis
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