Techniques in practice: Dark Hollow

Music Lesson: Dark Hollow

So let me play you a song called Dark Hollow. It's in the key of C major. This is another standard like the other songs I've been showing you. They're all songs and tunes you're really likely to encounter in a jam session.

I won't sing it, but I'll just play a real basic version of the melody using tremolo technique.

Basic Version

Okay, so that's the basic version of Dark Hollow using tremolo.

If you listen to it and look at the tab, you'll notice that there were a lot of places where I was sliding into notes.

• There's an instance of a flatted fifth to a fifth.
• That G note is the fifth of a chord.
• Slide there.
• There's a slide here. Slide, slide.

Ending Technique

Let me just correct that.

• You can slide down, and that's the way I've written it in the tablature.
• That slide there, if I slow it down, it kind of loses the effect. But really, just sliding down to that flatted fifth again and then picking up that note with my index finger in the second fret.

Variations

Another variation, rather than going open D, you can slide up and catch that D up here in a closed position. And that might sound better to you; just a slight variation.

Breaking Up Tremolo

The other thing about tremolo is that once you get comfortable just with the technique, then you can sort of break it up.

• Play some single notes mixed in with tremolo notes.
• If you notice, the kickoff to this is all down strokes.
• We're leading up to this note; this is a really common bluegrass kickoff.

Any song that starts on the fifth of the chord is just kind of a standard thing. Not that you want to play that all the time, but it's good to know.

So, anyhow, single notes there, then into tremolo. But then you can kind of intersperse tremolo with some single notes.

Practical Exercise

I'm not quite sure where I'm going to do this, but let me play it, and we'll see how it comes out.

So you get the idea by single notes. That's what I mean. You're breaking up the tremolo.

One of the hard things about that is interspersing those notes with the tremolo notes. It's hard to sort of keep the timing together, and so it's just something to work on.

You might work with a metronome, too. That can be really helpful in developing your sense of timing and also improving your ability to listen if you're really tuning in on the clicks of the metronome.