Trills - all about them

[cforlana]

What's your 'secret' to playing and practising trills? Some pieces have lots of trills and other embellishments... do you find that certain fingering always helps to play them evenly under high tempo? Or do you even prefer a certain fingering.... or should you be able to play trills with any fingering like 4-5 (I find it stiff but maybe it's just me!)

I like to practise trills under slow tempo and make sure they are even rhythmically and musically, otherwise a little 'glitch' in fast tempo drives me nuts! LOL.

[invictious]

Secrets? Practice with all fingers. For example, in Baroque music, those pesky mordents are just, meh, and you need to be able to do with me with all fingers.

That's pretty much it for me I guess..

[cforlana]

invictious, how about Mozart (sonatas for example) with many trills & turns leading to or from scales, in fast tempo - also practise with all fingers? thanks for your response btw.

[daniloperusina]

I think it's good to be a bit creative with trills. With long trills one can try the obvious 2-3 or 1-3, but sometimes also 2-4 or even 3-5.

With turns there are lot's of possibilities.
Mozart K333 in Bflat, first movement, bar 150, for example. There are four quick successive turns in fast tempo.
If playing all the turns 2-3-2-1-2-3-4 is too exhausting, one could try perhaps
1)1-3-2-1-3-5
2)2-4-3-1-1-5
3)1-4-3-2-1-4
4)1-4-3-2-1-4 

[pianogeek_cz]

LOL yeah, I was just going to speak about that wicked bar.
I use the very same fingerings, too (except for the 1-1 in the 2nd, by which I suppose you meant 1-2... can't imagine how you'd slide up on the black note.. ).

In the longer trills, you also don't have to subscribe to the same two fingers all the way through. In the aforementioned Mozart sonata, for example, there are bar-long trills where I switch from 1-3 to 2-3 a little after the third beat.

[viking]

Hopefully you'll get a response from Pita Bread.  He's the Yoda of trills. 

Sam

[term]

In the beginning they may be difficult, but they're just a matter of practice just like everything else.

And i think one should be able to do trills with every finger, 4-5 included. 45 is difficult, but after a while it works.
I've heard people who say they (i.e. 45 trills) should even be avoided, but i don't really get why...

[chopininov]

There is no secret to learning or playing trills, just as with any other technical skill. But if you would like some direction in terms of practicing them, Hanon and Czerny wrote some very helpful exercises on them; all fingers included.

[general disarray]

Trills are weird.  The more obsessed you become with them, the more difficult they are.

It's really only logical that the best approach to them is to take your two strongest fingers (wherever possible), thoroughly loosen your entire "mechanism" (wrists, arms, shoulders, back, hips) and just let fly. 

With a relaxed mechanism, you can trill for days with total control.

I think so-called exercises to learn to trill are absurd.  They only result in more obsession over what is a completely natural, basic and potentially simple keyboard task:  the repetition of two adjacent notes.

I mean, how hard is THAT?

But, when you begin to think and think and think about it -- analyzing it to death -- you begin to grow tense.  And tension is a trill-killer, for sure.

Trilling on 4/5 I wouldn't even get near unless I absolutely had to.  And 3/4?  Almost as dumb.  These fingers, for most hands, are physiologically weak to begin with.  The tendon design by nature is limiting.  That's how Schumann got into trouble -- trying to make 3/4 do what they are not designed to do.  To get 3/4 or 4/5 to function with control and a semblance of speed and power requires a good rotation technique.  Not increased "muscularity."

Go for the strongest fingers 1/2 and 2/3 whenever you can, and just warble away.

[richard black]

The trick is to find the balancing point of the particular piano you are playing, and that van vary quite a lot between instruments of the same make and model, never mind between makes and models (and grands and uprights). If you find that, you can trill as fast and as quiet as you like

[ramseytheii]

I think there is a generally unknown secret to trills, and that is that they can vary speed wildly.  Everyone seems to play all fast trills, all the time.  But trills can do anything: float along slowly, warble at medium tempo with intense volume; start slow and speed up; start fast and slow down; fluctuate in volume; etc.

The main problem with trills is that people don't view them creatively, they view them through uncreative physical prisms, that makes it impossible to incorporate them into the musical texture.  At every trill, you should ask yourself how it should sound - and that will tell you how it should be played.

Walter Ramsey