Vibrato for chords (how I approach it)

Marc Adler Thanks for your kind words, Marc! I am glad to be of service. I do feel that, since music is one of the best things we have as human beings, sharing anything that can help other felkows find their way into making and enjoying music more easy and beautiful is a kind of duty. 

If I understood you right (which i'm not 100% sure), then my answer would be that vibrato is about pulling and pushing the string back and forth so that you untune the suond towards both ends. You change the pitch by making the string more tense and less tense (as if you were doing it from the tuning pegs. That's why i do it horizontally. Because I want the actual pitch to be the center of the vibrato. 

If I understood you right, by doing the vibrato vertically (like pulling the string sideways towards the other strings like in electric guitar bending?) you only untune towards a higher pitch thus making the center of the vibrato untuned (sharper) in constrast with the clear sound with no vibrato. 

Does this sound right to you? Did I understand you correctly? Is this an answer to your actual question? There is a chapter on Vibrato in Tonebase. I don't remember by who but I know it worked on the same premises that I do.  

Marc Adler 

Marc Adler said:
I almost never use vibrato ... I know how to apply it, but I always fear that a piece might sound too "sappy" by the application of too much vibrato. I feel the same fear about rolled chords ... at what point does the application of a rolled chord feel too "sappy"? (I hope that you understand the concept of "sappiness". I don't know if there is an equivalent term in Spanish... sensiblero, tontuelo?)

 It's a pity you don't ... I think that it's an expressive element that we must manage as any other. For me, coming from a family with a violinist and a cellist, vibrato is a thing that I decide where NOT to apply it. Of course there are different types and if you use the wrong one, we sound like a very bad singer. Cindy Cyndi, you may be interested with this, too:

I think there are 3 variables to vibrato. Width, speed and preassure. The first too are a bit obvious (how fast I wiggle/waggle) and how wide, the first speaks to the velocity of the wave of vibrato and the second to the amount of untuning I put in place. The preassure is a tricky one. The vibrato is performed by the adherence of the finger to the string. The more adherence it has, the more the string follows the finger's wiggling/waggling. So, preassure would regulate what would be the "mix" in a chorus or flanger pedal. 

Regarding rolled chords, Marc, I don't use them much either. I feel the hay three functions and should be applied only when they succeed in fulfilling any of those. 

1) as an embelishment for a very important chord or harmony. 

2)as a way to dilute tempo (when you roll the listeners kinda looses the feeling of where the bit exactly is) this is usefull when you perform rubato. 

3) to mark some voice that I want to play especially in some way or the other. So, to clear the polyphony. 

If it's not for some of these reasons I never roll chords. I had never heard it "sappy" but intuitively I guess yes, that would be a possible translation.

Cindy great! thanks for sharing that!! I'm happy to help! Have fun!! :-)