Vibrato

Paulius Volkovas

Sorry, i didn't want to discourage anyone. There are some good suggestions, please keep them comming.
What helped me with 2nd finger vibrato is start slow and making all subdivisions of the beat with vibrato.then increase the tempo when i can do it.
I developed some strenght in my wrist this way. But what bothers me its more difficult on some parts on the neck along the string.

Hemert

Back when the Rosenberg Academy started in 2011 I studied Stochelo's vibrato in great detail. I'm talking looking from all angles, feeling the muscle tension in his arm and shoulders during vibrato, finger pressure on the strings and angle of the wrist.

Vibrato on the high B and E string is usually achieved by:

- let go of the thumb behind the neck and point it up and slightly backward
- there's only one contact point with the guitar (the vibrato finger or two fingers)
- lock your wrist
- make up and down movements from the elbow
- the more you tense the muscles in your forearm the faster the vibrato will be

Vibrato on the low A and E string:

- Keep your thumb on the neck but move it back away from the fingers and halfway on the neck (halfway between the top and bottom of the neck)
- there's two contact points (finger(s) on the fret and thumb behind the neck)
- move the string up and down by rotating your HAND (like turning a door knob)
- there's a slight "squeezing" motion involved
- tense the muscles in your forearm

Vibrato on D and G is far more difficult. You can choose one of the two vibrato techniques above but you will find the strings are much harder to move.

Some key points:

- tensing the muscles in the forearm will really help achieve the right sound
- you need some pressure on the string but not TOO MUCH, just enough so that the string doesnt slip away from your fingers during the vibrato
- try to avoid sounding the note after your vibrato stops (for any reason). So if you start a vibrato and can't keep it up just cut the note by making a quick glissando movement downwards. This will make sure your vibrato will never sound like a failed attempt
- don't fight your guitar moving when playing vibrato. As long as your guitar doesn't drop from your knee you'll be fine (same goes for violin).

I have the vibrato on the high strings pretty much down but on the low strings it could be better. The French style players use a very different technique by the way, which is more focused on the actual vibrato finger and almost always produces a superfast vibrato (but very pleasant to the ear) and is difficult to maintain on long notes.

A Gent

There're at least two examples of Django's vibrato here - alas, without sound, but no sound is better than no picture either - from around 2.01. It looks to me like he's pressing hard into the fingerboard and up and down the string, rather than across the fret, but it's difficult to tell.

Buco

It's good Paulius, you started a good and helpful discussion and that's what matters the most, to get things rolling.

I your case, if you feel like you're having trouble on certain parts of the neck, maybe what you need is to work on building finger strength. I checked some of your vids on youtube and enjoyed it, you're a great player but you do seem to have a light touch. So more string pressure might be the ticket.
To quote @stubla from another thread, hope he doesn't mind:

stubla wrote: »

Still its fair to say,with all due modesty,that a lot of the sound is finally in the 'hands'.
The right hand technique is crucial of course but talking to Fapy last yesr in Samoreau he told me to work on left hand finger strength--he said it was the secret of getting great tone--not just vibrato but also left hand finger pressure. If you listen to Django (or Fapy) he often creates the illusion of using vibrato on every note even at really fast tempos---what hes actually doing is using a lot of finger pressure.
Stu

Couple of the finger strength exercises here:
http://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/78596/#Comment_78596

I was checking that video above with a couple of examples when he does it. When looking this closely, what's interesting is that he seems to be using very small finger movements for one. We can safely assume he puts a good chunk of muscle into it.
Another thing that came up for me, is on the longer notes he's using very high frequency and on the shorter notes it seems to be 1-3 cycles only, regardless of the tempo of the tune.
But in all cases there's not a lot of exaggerated hand/finger movement.
Lastly, on a few of these examples, this video above and J'attendrai video (I believe that was one of his single note playing tricks/techniques, to use a meaty part of the finger so he can skip to two consecutive notes on two adjacent strings with the same finger and get more mileage out of his two soloing fingers that way), he is often using the meaty part of the finger rather than the finger tip to create vibrato.
And lastly, what's been mentioned here already by @scoredog I believe, is that his initial movement is downwards.
Which is a bummer for me because I trained myself to go up in most cases, back to square 1.

Paulius Volkovas

Thanks @Buco I will try more finger pressure method.
But i always thought more pressure is counter productive since it tends to build unneccessery tension and might slow you down. I always thought less pressure was the right way to go. Is is really common to use alot of left hand finger pressure in gypsy jazz?

Buco

My opinion is if you're concisely exerting pressure it's not good. I think you need a natural strength that you dont need to think about. Like a person with a strong hand that has iron grip handshake but to them it's just a normal handshake, they don't try to grip hard. That, coupled with things mentioned earlier; tensing of arm muscles, grounding the shoulder and stabilizing the wrist.

A whole another can of worms is being able to apply the vibrato during the song. When I test myself on the vibrato I think it's not bad but I'm aware that I rarely use it in a performance. I use it with some head melodies but it doesn't just jump out during solos for me and I'll need to deliberately practice it at home first.

Scoredog

I never think pressure or finger strength, always wrist. If I hold a note normally and then vibrato there is little difference in in my left finger approach, it all happens below the fingers, they are kept straight except the wrist pulls or pushes them. I guess some people might use shoulder or elbow but way too much motion for me.

Scoredog

A picture is worth a thousand words and a video maybe 2 thousands.
I have never tried doing instruction on a vid before so bare with the crudeness.

https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/31773631/File May 02, 5 57 29 PM.mov

dennis

christiaan s advice is good. the typical django vibrato is indeed done by tensing up the forearm/wrist a bit... also the technique varies on whether you push the string up or pull down... depending on the speed of thevibrato, i think when u push up it s better to release the thumbb, but when u pull down it can go both ways (thumb off or on).. in the j attendrai video, django always pulls down. i dont think it s generally a good idea to do vibrato from the finger, it should come from the weight of the arm or tensing up of the wrist... it s a vast topic though. there s also the speed that s important and the speed in relation to the tempo of the song, the intonation, the accuracy of the oscillation, etc... it s also an ear training exercise because u need to hear it all to execute the appropriate vibrato. classical violinists have great exercises where they practice the oscillations with a metronome.

i talk about vibrato in my technique lesson on my website btw... ahem.....

dennis

haha thx for using my backing track, scoredog but if i may make a comment

when you do your vibrato (not all of them) you tend to be oscillating between 3 pitches when it should be 2 (at least in my opinion), you basically push the string up to a pitch but descend t a pitch that s higher than the original, it makes it sound out of tune as the brain generally wants to hear the pitch go back down to the original one..


the best exercise i can recommend is oscillating at a slow rate , say 8th notes at a slow tempo, and to practice going up a half step , high up on the b string, say 12 th fret.. bend up to c, go back to b, back and forth, and as lne gets better, and hears the pitches correctly, try a quarter step...