Forearm tension

robertsaunders

When I work up the speed of my tremolo picking on two or three strings at a time and sustain it until the point where I'm tired, I feel it in my forearm, not the wrist, though I'm keeping as much of the energy as I can focussed in the wrist. Is this okay?

Joli Gadjo

Indeed, the muscles of your fingers, wrist... everything in your hand is somehow, some way attached, linked to your forearm, directly with a muscle of with a tendon.
Move your fingers and look at your arm, you'll see them working !
But also, these muscles are a little bit like your biceps, they get tired rapidly.
John McLaughlin said that when he works a lot and feels his muscles very tense, he likes to rest them holding a small bottle containing a warm liquid. It relaxes your muscles but keep them warm.
Just give it some rest, it's not a workout !!!

MichaelHorowitz

The tremolo should be pretty relaxed. If you're feeling tension I would stop right away. Build speed slowly, making sure it's relaxed. At faster tempos the motion gets smaller.

Sometimes you have to dig in a bit to get more volume...but in general I'd avoid that. Especially when first starting.

robertsaunders

I do tend to go all out when correcting technique. I used to study drums with all the rudiments and exercises. The speed-building concept is similar to this, but there was usually a point where I felt a quantum leap in improvement...sort of a revelation, a "eureka" moment. I'm hoping this will be the same, so I get impatient. The single-string tremolo is particularly hard because it's like trying to bat a baseball out of tree with a thirty-foot pole: uncoordinated jerking and bumping into things.

Thanks for the replies.

-Rob