Practicing the tremolo technique when you don’t have much time

For those new to this blog, this is a continuation of my first blog on mastering Recuerdos de la Alhambra and the tremolo technique (located at http://recuerdosdelaalhambra.blogspot.com). In it, I am tracking my progress on Recuerdos and the tremolo technique. So far, I’ve been at it about a month now and wanted to continue my notations on my daily progress here.

I generally like to practice the tremolo technique for about 20 minutes a day and then spend another 20 minutes on Aaron Shearer’s “Reminiscence” (a simpler tremolo piece that I’m using as a stepping stone to Recuerdos). Today, I didn’t have as much time so I spent 10 minutes working on the tremolo technique. I spent all my practice time on the 2nd string. I set the metronome to 125 and had it beat on the p and m strokes. I used my thumb on the 6th string to create the largest distance between my thumb and fingers. At first, I concentrated on evenness of my tremolo by accenting the m finger in my p-a-m-i progression. I then switched it up and did a p-i-m-a progression. I then finished with some speed bursts (all still on the 2nd string - see my January 9 posting on the old blog for discussion of speed bursts) and paid particular attention to the regularity/evenness of my tremolo. If you don’t have much time, I recommend doing something on a daily basis even if only for 10 minutes.