Kossoff's vibrato...

[John the Revelator]

Hi, been playing for approximately 20 years but still have a lot to learn. One thing I haven't mastered is Kossoff's vibrato. Do you guys have any tip on how to do it? Angus Young is another good vibrato-dude - though he bends with his pinky, so that's not really my technique...

Anyone?

The beauty of it is in it's range (wide), speed (intense) and pitch (soooo accurate)....

[Ride on a Pony]

From the horse's mouth:

“I think my sound, especially my vibrato, has taken a long time to sound mature, and it’s taken a long time to reach the speed of vibrato that I now have. I trill with my first, middle, and ring fingers and bend chiefly with my small finger. I’ll use my index finger when I’m using vibrato.

“I like to move people; I don’t like to show off. I like to make sounds as I remember sounds that move me. My style is very primitive but at the same time it has developed in its own sense. I do my best to express myself and move people at the same time.

“I think there’s still more room to develop in the way I’m playing. My vibrato is finally starting to grow up.”

Just lots of practice I guess.

[Wizzle]

YouTube - Free - Mr Big

YouTube - Free - Mr Big

You get some clear shots at 2:28 and 2:43.

[John the Revelator]

Thanks for the tips! I watched a video about vibrato technique, it seems I do my vibratos by bending up to pitch, lowering and back. But Kossoff's wide vibrato comes from both lowering and raising, thus creating a sinuswave under AND over the pitch. The trick is to be EXACT and have extreme control - now, all I have to do is PRACTISE!

Hrrrm, I'll get back to y'all!

[b-squared]

You need good hand strength for that style as well...if you aren't exercising your hands with one of those hand-squeezer things, you should.

Good luck!

BB

[ExpatBrit]

Originally Posted by John the Revelator

Thanks for the tips! I watched a video about vibrato technique, it seems I do my vibratos by bending up to pitch, lowering and back. But Kossoff's wide vibrato comes from both lowering and raising, thus creating a sinuswave under AND over the pitch. The trick is to be EXACT and have extreme control - now, all I have to do is PRACTISE!

Hrrrm, I'll get back to y'all!

Eeerrrm, I can see that he may bend the string in both up and down direction when doing vibrato, but how do you bend to under pitch? Did you mean to say that?

[flatrockmobile]

"I can see that he may bend the string in both up and down direction when doing vibrato, but how do you bend to under pitch?"

If the vibrato is on a bent note, then yes it will lower and raise the pitch.

[5F6-A]

your vibrato is unique to you.... find your own and cherish it

[Nigel Tufnel's tech]

Advice on vibrato from the lord of the strings.

YouTube - Guthrie Govan @ Ziua Chitarelor Bucuresti 12/09/09

YouTube - Guthrie Govan @ Ziua Chitarelor Bucuresti 12/09/09

[ExpatBrit]

Originally Posted by flatrockmobile

"I can see that he may bend the string in both up and down direction when doing vibrato, but how do you bend to under pitch?"

If the vibrato is on a bent note, then yes it will lower and raise the pitch.

Oh yeah, didn't think of that scenario.

[ExpatBrit]

Originally Posted by flatrockmobile

If the vibrato is on a bent note, then yes it will lower and raise the pitch.

Oh yeah, didn't think of that scenario.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Ride on a Pony

From the horse's mouth:

“I think my sound, especially my vibrato, has taken a long time to sound mature, and it’s taken a long time to reach the speed of vibrato that I now have. I trill with my first, middle, and ring fingers and bend chiefly with my small finger. I’ll use my index finger when I’m using vibrato.

“I like to move people; I don’t like to show off. I like to make sounds as I remember sounds that move me. My style is very primitive but at the same time it has developed in its own sense. I do my best to express myself and move people at the same time.

“I think there’s still more room to develop in the way I’m playing. My vibrato is finally starting to grow up.”

Just lots of practice I guess.

And this was early `76 shortly before he died, and we mortals marvel at his vibrato from nearly a decade earlier on Paul's Blues.

P.S. I gather he meant that he bends the top E with his little finger on occasion.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by 5F6-A

your vibrato is unique to you.... find your own and cherish it

I admire this sentiment, but in my view Kossoff's vibrato was truly outstanding, and by definition most of us have less than outstanding vibratos.

Studying technique, within reason, seems like a positive thing to me.

[5F6-A]

Originally Posted by Angus

I admire this sentiment, but in my view Kossoff's vibrato was truly outstanding, and by definition most of us have less than outstanding vibratos.

Studying technique, within reason, seems like a positive thing to me.

you are correct!! .... don't go for second best.
My advice? Study the greats, practise hard, try your best and you'll have something worth cherishing!!!

[jimification]

I think Kossof's vibrato (on single notes where he's not bending up to pitch for example) is very fast. I think this is easiest to achieve using the first finger.

One great tip I got from Eric Johnson's video is not to wrap your thumb around the neck when doing this. It really helps you vibrato the note freely if the thumb does not touch the neck when you are doing this kind of vibrato with the first finger. All that touches is the fingertip on the string and the pivot point / fulcrum, where the hand touches the bottom of the neck at the base of the first finger.

[Lampens]

That's how BB king does it as well I believe.

[Phil47uk]

I must admit, I'm not a fan of Kossoffs vib technique. To fast.. Too soon..Too intense.
I prefer to add vibrato like a singers adds tremolo to a note.. Play the note clean..Introduce the vibrato and widen it with slightly more attack as the note sustains.

To see what I'm getting at, listen to the vocalist on the opening note of Handel's largo.
Obviously it's not quite the same, but based on this technique. This gives your notes a more vocal quality.

YouTube - Handel 'Largo'

YouTube - Handel 'Largo'

[decoy205]

Originally Posted by Phil47uk

I must admit, I'm not a fan of Kossoffs vib technique. To fast.. Too soon..Too intense.
I prefer to add vibrato like a singers adds tremolo to a note.. Play the note clean..Introduce the vibrato and widen it with slightly more attack as the note sustains.

To see what I'm getting at, listen to the vocalist on the opening note of Handel's largo.
Obviously it's not quite the same, but based on this technique. This gives your notes a more vocal quality.

YouTube - Handel 'Largo'

I agree mostly with that too. I also think though sometimes aggressive vibrato works for certain things. Sometimes in some of Free's songs the song is all soft and he comes in way to strong with the vibrato but i guess that was his style.

[Phil47uk]

Here's a silly thing I did a year or so back buggering around adjusting the neck pickup on my R0..Just straight into the desk, no effects and ad libbed in one take, so don't expect a great tune or tone as it's only a test clip and the only way I could get it onto my computer anyway was taking a lead out of the headphones socket on a Tascam..
Here is the sort of vib I tend to use, although this is not my usual style of playing.

4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download Humph.mp3

[Quill]

(wow, the Guthrie Govan clip is great - wish I'd watched that before posting all this!)

My opinion is that it's not a question of opinion. Vibrato is a felt thing - it's what seems to push our response to a note out of the ear and down into the body. If, as a player, you hear Kossoff's vibrato and the way it just explodes, right out of the gate, gets you where you live, then you gotta work on it and damn the torpedos. If it makes you cringe, then you have to run away - there's simply no choice in the matter!

Of course, if you can get a few different kinds into your bag, so much the better.

I love that fast, immediate vibrato - it goes waaaay back. I have a few thoughts about how to go about getting it; if you saw Tapas's thumb position thread, you probably already saw all this and I apologise for the repetition ... also, I practice bending and vibrato separately, and then practice combining the techniques after I've made some progress with both.

I start with a left-hand position that has the thumb above the top of the neck, but not really around it - as though you've grabbed the guitar as if to pick it up, and then just let go of it. Imagine a straight line running from your elbow, through your wrist, and out past the fretboard. Your wrist rotates back and forth around that line. It's the centre of the movement, and is itself still. Your hand is loose on the neck, but you can put some pressure onto the note with the "cradle" of your thumb and index finger. The first, second or third finger holds the note, maybe even the fourth, with different sounds from each. Here's the juicy part, that really takes practice: you locate the tip of your finger right on that centre line, if you want to do a fast, tight vibrato. This works best for me with the first finger. But if you want to make it wider and crazier, you move that centre line down your finger, maybe put the first knuckle back from the tip in line with the centre, or even the second knuckle. The weight of your thumb and, across from that, the fingers of the left hand that remain loose, helps to balance the swing of the arc, and becomes more important the wider the vibrato you are going for.

It's the way this approach feels in the hand that I think is the key to the effect. (But if I'm right about it, it's far more than an "effect".) The actions of your hand and arm, and the joy inherent in that movement, almost seem to transfer through the note straight into the listener.

For a vibrato that comes in more slowly, and drops as well as raises the pitch, the classical player's vibrato is worth looking at. It's simpler to explain but just as hard to do: you hold the note with two or three fingers, locate the thumb down on the neck, behind the fingers, with light support, and work the arm back and forth along the string. Like a violinist. The nice thing about this approach is that you can easily control the pitch, and very evenly drop the pitch as well as raise it, which is a beautiful sound and completely different.

Just a couple of really basic things I work on myself. Getting that "sine-wave" feel into the pitch of a bent note, like you (John-the-Revelator) are going for - that's got to be the hardest - but it's my experience that working on these styles also helps that out.

[decoy205]

Originally Posted by Phil47uk

Here's a silly thing I did a year or so back buggering around adjusting the neck pickup on my R0..Just straight into the desk, no effects and ad libbed in one take, so don't expect a great tune or tone as it's only a test clip and the only way I could get it onto my computer anyway was taking a lead out of the headphones socket on a Tascam..
Here is the sort of vib I tend to use, although this is not my usual style of playing.

4shared.com - online file sharing and storage - download Humph.mp3

wow Excellent playing Phil. I realize that was mostly improve but it was very tasteful. I hear some cool scales used in there too. Very jazzy.
i hear what you are saying about using the notes like a vocalist to make them sing. I do that sometimes too, but I'm not as skilled with the scales as you.

[Phil47uk]

Originally Posted by decoy205

wow Excellent playing Phil. I realize that was mostly improve but it was very tasteful. I hear some cool scales used in there too. Very jazzy.
i hear what you are saying about using the notes like a vocalist to make them sing. I do that sometimes too, but I'm not as skilled with the scales as you.

Thanks decoy, but you see it's all an illusion. As I have said many times, it's the chords that are going against the scales that give the various flavours. Sometimes in there I'd be using the same scale, maybe phrased differently, but the functions change against the chord making it sound completely different.
There are actually very few scales that are used in western music and you probably know them all anyway. It's relationship between them and the chords that often unlocks the secret of interesting sounds. I only used a pentatonic scale once during a small section at 0:31 during the whole thing. The rest was mainly diatonic and arpeggio based.
Don't ask me what I was doing.I just made it up as I went along.. I could dissect it down I suppose if I analysed it, but as Miles Davis once said 'I'll play it first and tell you what it is later'.
In other words, buggered if I know what I was doing.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Phil47uk

I must admit, I'm not a fan of Kossoffs vib technique. To fast.. Too soon..Too intense.
I prefer to add vibrato like a singers adds tremolo to a note.. Play the note clean..Introduce the vibrato and widen it with slightly more attack as the note sustains.

To see what I'm getting at, listen to the vocalist on the opening note of Handel's largo.
Obviously it's not quite the same, but based on this technique. This gives your notes a more vocal quality.

YouTube - Handel 'Largo'

Phil, its a different effect - delightful, but she's not conveying putting somebody in the ground, I'm guessing. :-)

And don't give me that "To fast.. Too soon..Too intense" gobshite, its life-changing is what it is.

Seriously - Kossoff's playing seems to bypass my head and go straight to my heart - but this is pretty early stuff, maybe you'd get on better with his later vibrato - Come together in the Morning or Time Away style?

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Phil47uk

Here's a silly thing I did a year or so back buggering around adjusting the neck pickup on my R0..Just straight into the desk, no effects and ad libbed in one take, so don't expect a great tune or tone as it's only a test clip and the only way I could get it onto my computer anyway was taking a lead out of the headphones socket on a Tascam..
Here is the sort of vib I tend to use, although this is not my usual style of playing.

Not really comparable to Kossoff's vibrato or style in any way, shape or form though is it.

Nice playing though, Phil. It reminded me a bit of Jan Akerman who I think is great.

[Quill]

Originally Posted by Angus

And don't give me that "To fast.. Too soon..Too intense" gobshite, its life-changing is what it is.

...

Seriously - Kossoff's playing seems to bypass my head and go straight to my heart ...

As a player's vibrato should. This is what I was trying to get at, as well. To say, "I like this vibrato, not that vibrato" in a thread that is about "I want to hear about how other people try to get that vibrato" is, at minimum, beside the point. However proficient one might be at "this vibrato".

It may be worse than "beside the point" - it has the potential to imply, regardless of intent, "what you like is wrong" ... and on matters of art, or at least, of vibrato style, who would want to say that?

[Phil47uk]

Originally Posted by Angus

Phil, its a different effect - delightful, but she's not conveying putting somebody in the ground, I'm guessing. :-)

And don't give me that "To fast.. Too soon..Too intense" gobshite, its life-changing is what it is.

Seriously - Kossoff's playing seems to bypass my head and go straight to my heart - but this is pretty early stuff, maybe you'd get on better with his later vibrato - Come together in the Morning or Time Away style?

No, the opera singer analogy was merely meant to convey how one can approach the subject. Obviously sometimes you need to be more agressive.
To me personally I do find Kossoffs vib a bit too agitated.

Don't forget life changing can mean many things to many people. To a suicide bomber for instance life changing is blowing yourself to smithereens for a better life in the next world..

[Quill]

Life-changing.

Ok. Let's say a young person's attention is suddenly (and, apparently, to you, Phil47uk, inexplicably - but let's hold onto that fact for a moment) captivated by Kossoff's vibrato. It's the example we have in front of us. Along with the example of the suicide bomber. I'm just working with what's here. Anyway. Maybe the kid's been curious about the guitar but not that serious. But somehow, he or she has run across an old recording and hears something that really has an effect - opens a door. And it's like a message from another time, or from somewhere outside of time, that says, there's something else you can do with your time and your mind and your body other than giving it all to prefrontal-cortex-crushing, soul-destroying computer games or to running with that good-for-nothing gang or, hell, to the charming suck of violent religious fanaticism out of a desperate need to make sense out of a crazy, heart-breaking world and eventually being evilly manipulated into killing yourself and maybe a whole lot of other people, too. Instead of maybe going down one of those roads, you can give yourself to trying to make your guitar sound like that way that that guitar player from that old band was trying to make his guitar sound. None of this comes into awareness, of course - the message, the open door, it's felt, like a presence, a change in the air - a tremble deep inside somewhere, maybe in form kind of like that very vibrato we're talking about here. But in any case, it's just a feeling the kid has.

And the kid thinks, yeah, I can try making my guitar sound like that, and gets pretty excited about it. Something clicks.

But the kid needs some help. Can't quite figure it out. More complicated than he or she thought. Wants it all the more, for that. In fact, the way his or her desire is building is giving a bit of focus - maybe it helps the kid to cut through a headful of noisy distractions and pay attention to something long enough to have a complete thought.

I recently read about how the average attention span is now down to five minutes from the twelve minutes that it was ten years ago, with the greatest drop appearing in young children and teenagers.

So our budding guitarist hears about a great teacher. He or she has asked around, and figured out that that's the guy to go to for help with playing the guitar. Gets really excited and heads on down with pounding heart and shaking hands. Maybe brings along a recording as an example. Takes a massive leap of trust and lays it all out for you - excuse me, for the teacher. Maybe doesn't understand the magnitude of the moment, but that kid's heart is beating like never before. Here it is.

What does our teacher do with this moment? Does the teacher understand the magnitude of the moment? It's impossible to understand. No-one can bear the weight of these moments. But how do we manage? What happens if the teacher doesn't get it? Knows how to do what the kid wants to do, but doesn't see why the kid wants to do that. The young person's interest is inexplicable to the teacher. The teacher thinks there are better vibratos ...

Life-changing.

[Phil47uk]

Originally Posted by Quill

Life-changing.

Ok. Let's say a young person's attention is suddenly (and, apparently, to you, Phil47uk, inexplicably - but let's hold onto that fact for a moment) captivated by Kossoff's vibrato. It's the example we have in front of us. Along with the example of the suicide bomber. I'm just working with what's here. Anyway. Maybe the kid's been curious about the guitar but not that serious. But somehow, he or she has run across an old recording and hears something that really has an effect - opens a door. And it's like a message from another time, or from somewhere outside of time, that says, there's something else you can do with your time and your mind and your body other than giving it all to prefrontal-cortex-crushing, soul-destroying computer games or to running with that good-for-nothing gang or, hell, to the charming suck of violent religious fanaticism out of a desperate need to make sense out of a crazy, heart-breaking world and eventually being evilly manipulated into killing yourself and maybe a whole lot of other people, too. Instead of maybe going down one of those roads, you can give yourself to trying to make your guitar sound like that way that that guitar player from that old band was trying to make his guitar sound. None of this comes into awareness, of course - the message, the open door, it's felt, like a presence, a change in the air - a tremble deep inside somewhere, maybe in form kind of like that very vibrato we're talking about here. But in any case, it's just a feeling the kid has.

And the kid thinks, yeah, I can try making my guitar sound like that, and gets pretty excited about it. Something clicks.

But the kid needs some help. Can't quite figure it out. More complicated than he or she thought. Wants it all the more, for that. In fact, the way his or her desire is building is giving a bit of focus - maybe it helps the kid to cut through a headful of noisy distractions and pay attention to something long enough to have a complete thought.

I recently read about how the average attention span is now down to five minutes from the twelve minutes that it was ten years ago, with the greatest drop appearing in young children and teenagers.

So our budding guitarist hears about a great teacher. He or she has asked around, and figured out that that's the guy to go to for help with playing the guitar. Gets really excited and heads on down with pounding heart and shaking hands. Maybe brings along a recording as an example. Takes a massive leap of trust and lays it all out for you - excuse me, for the teacher. Maybe doesn't understand the magnitude of the moment, but that kid's heart is beating like never before. Here it is.

What does our teacher do with this moment? Does the teacher understand the magnitude of the moment? It's impossible to understand. No-one can bear the weight of these moments. But how do we manage? What happens if the teacher doesn't get it? Knows how to do what the kid wants to do, but doesn't see why the kid wants to do that. The young person's interest is inexplicable to the teacher. The teacher thinks there are better vibratos ...

Life-changing.

Blimey!

No, a teacher should always inspire, but should also show the pupils other avenues to explore too.
If a kid comes to me with CD and wants to know how it goes, we'll work on it, providing of course it's not beyond his ability.
But then, the original poster has been playing for twenty years, so there really isn't much one can say other than to give ones opinion on the technique, which as I said is quite aggitated in my own personal opinion and which in itself is descriptive.
Even guitar teachers are allowed opinions sometimes you know.

[Quill]

Of course - especially in a forum thread - but the OP did ask for help on how to do it, not whether everyone liked it - and I suppose I wish your expressed opinion had been followed with something like "... but if you really have your heart set on it, here's a couple of things you can try to help you make that agitated noise, after which you're sure to come to your senses and move on" etc. etc. - as I'd've loved to read your thoughts on how to do it. As I've enjoyed reading all the other helpful posts here.

Because I've been playing for more than thirty years and I have to practice my vibrato every time I pick up the damn guitar.

[Angus]

Originally Posted by Quill

Because I've been playing for more than thirty years and I have to practice my vibrato every time I pick up the damn guitar.

I've also been playing for in excess of 30 years, although given that fact I should be a lot better than I am - anyway, the thing that made me take it up in the first place was Kossoff's vibrato. Those howling notes in Allright Now caused the hairs on the back of my neck to stand up.