2 Types of Vibrato!

When I do vibrato I push the string across the fretboard, ie bending it up and down.
But when watching guy like clapton you see they just wiggle there fingers on the fretted note, then dont move it up and down.
Are there distinct terms for these two types?

In the days when I had lessons, I was constantly getting bollocked for using the "finger wiggelling" vibrato on an electric. the party line was ... that is a nylon string trick not an electric trick. I have since learnt that that criticism was a bit harsh and that "finger wiggelling vibrato" does have a place in my playing. It is a subtle nuance not a smack in the face like the big old BB king style ! I find it adds sustain as well as adding a little vibrato flavor to a note.

Here's an good article about vibrato:
http://www.vai.com/LittleBlackDots/84/vibrato.html

That's what I was going to post SPL. Vai's vibrato is very nice and he uses a circular method while doing it.

Kind of like moving your finger in a circle around the note, not necessarily bending the note flat and sharp, in an up and down fashion.

Good article, take a look.

i always used a mix of the regular rock vibrato and the classical one - depends where on the fretboard i am and how i want it to sound - but i use like 90% classical vibrato. i nthe end its not the technique that counts, its the result. either of all the possible vibrato-techniques are fine (there are actually more than just the 3 on vai´s site)

Originally posted by Azrael
there are actually more than just the 3 on vai´s site

Please enlighten us. :-)

well ^^

i know 2 more

the first one is done simply with the whammy bar - this offers you the possibility to vibrato up and down, while with a normal vibrato you can only vary the tone upwards.

the second one is something that george lynch and warren dimartini use quite often - its more like a slide - play a note say the e on the g-string 9th fret - then slide back and forth between the 8th, 9th and 10th fret very quickly - this is nothing for the soft ballads however :D

okay i got 4 types of vibrato here.
1st- horizontal vibrato you rock your hand gently at the fret keepin finger in the same place, release your thumb from the neck to add more effect
2nd- vertical vibrato you move your finger back and forth along the fret, not goin up or down just side to side.
3rd- wide vibrato just move the string up and down quick.
4th- again like first one keep your finger still but quickly rotate the wrist from side to side. classic blues vibrato.

an of course you could always take your pickin hand and bend the note usin the string beind the nut.

Nobody's mentioned the names of vibratos:
The classical vibrato (mentioned above) is sometimes called a linear vibrato. Pitch goes up and down but shallow modulation, easy to do it very fast.
The BB King and 90% rock guitarist's vibrato uses the joint of the first finger as a pivot and the string is rocked side to side. The hand is sometimes said to look butterfly like; the thumb may look like the bodyand the 3 non- fretting fingers look like the wing; hence "Butterfly vibrato". This makes a wide wailing vibrato but it's damn hard to learn. I thought for a long time I was doing it wrong but it's just a case of practice. Now it's easy.
I like the idea of Clapton's method using the elbow to rock the hand up and down simply because it could be combined with a linear vibrato and the combined modulation of vibratos could make quite an interesting sound. I regularly combine tremolo arm and fretting hand vibratos for this reason. If you want to learn about tremolo arm vibrato methods you could do far worse than to watch a live video of Satriani.

I just thought I'd mention the "Tiger Claw" vibrato; Vai uses it quite often (over use in my opinion). If you have a floating floydd rose tremolo pull the arm away from the bridge and release it suddenly. The springs of the system acting in opposition make the note very very rapidly waver up and down over decreasing amplitudes until the bar comes to rest after about 1 second. It sounds great but more like a tiger "pur" than a clawing associated noise. Great for a properly fierce metal solo.

I just call em guitar vibrato and violin vibrato.

Guitar vibrato is up and down, often dramatically altering the pitch

Violin vibrato is where you move along the string, its more subtle