Tremolos (single note) to continue over a series of notes.

I wish to create a single note tremolo which continues from the first note of a bar to the second, third and fourth notes of the bar. I can obviously place a broken demi-semiquaver bar symbol over each of the four notes, but is there a way of indicating that I want the tremolo to start at the first crotchet and end at the last crotchet without cluttering up each note with bars. I suppose I could just put "trem. " over the first note and "end trem" after the last? Then to get the playback, hide the individual 3 bar signs.