Tremolo picking is alternate picking done quickly on a single note. This staccato technique has been around for years—5000 to be exact. Shred masters of the ancient world...
Tremolo picking is alternate picking done quickly on a single note. This staccato technique has been around for years—5000 to be exact. Shred masters of the ancient world were playing an 11 string lute called the Oud. Players of this Persian invention didn’t use picks—they used an eagle feather to play staccato trills and rock the Fertile Crescent.
In American history, tremolo picking first made its appearance on the mandolin—arguably because the instrument has such limited sustain. Mandolin players were forced to alternate pick notes at quick tempos to accommodate the melody they were playing.
In the early Sixties, Dick Dale popularized the technique for electric guitar with his surf rock masterpiece “Misirlou.” Van Halen then heard the technique, and the rest is history. Ax wielders from Al Di Meola to Zack Wylde and everyone in between have used tremolo picking in one form or another and for one very good reason: it sounds awesome.
You know what else sounds awesome? Tapping. It is one of rock guitar's flashiest, coolest sounding techniques. Van Halen knows it, Steve Vai knows it, and so do you. Tapping allows you to create a veritable cascade of notes. It lets you create combinations of high and low notes your fingers on your neck hand alone could never pull off (pun intended). And, let’s face it, it looks super cool.
So what’s better than tremolo picking or tapping? Doing both back to back in the same solo. This is shredding at its finest. Because while each technique individually melts faces, imagine the reaction when they are combined. Indeed someone’s going to need to come up with a new expression. “Tapping and tremolo picking melted that dude’s face, but the two back to back liquefied his entire freakin’ head.” Alright, we’ll work on the semantics later.