Implementing vibrato

Vibrato is something that can make a piece of music sound like a piece of music. Playing without any vibrato often sounds flat and maybe a little lifeless.

But we don’t want to just add as much vibrato as we can to every single note. Some notes might require just a tiny bit of vibrato. Some notes might require a slow vibrato. And some notes might require a fast vibrato. The same goes for wide or narrow vibrato.

A lot of this is up to the discretion of the player.

The way you can learn to do this is to practice it different ways.

Take a slow song. A ballad would be a good choice.

Add some slow vibrato to the ends of the notes. Don’t add it at the beginning, but start about halfway through the note’s duration. See how that sounds.

Then add the vibrato at the beginning, or just the end of the notes.

See how those sound.

Add fast vibrato to the notes and see how that changes the sound of the notes.

Do the same thing with the width of the vibrato. Experiment with both narrow and wide vibratos.

Listen to them closely and figure out which type of vibrato you like.

A common way to add vibrato is by adding slow and narrow vibrato to long notes at slower tempos and wider and faster vibrato to songs at fast tempos. That’s often how musicians play vibrato. That’s a good place to start too because it’ll give you a benchmark or a reference point of how to play vibrato.

As you practice adding vibrato and expression to different pieces of music you’ll likely have opinions about what types of vibrato you like and what types of sounds you like in different types of music. That’s good. That means you’re developing your own musical taste and style.

ISJ