Trills

[sisterjenche]

HELP! ::)I am having trouble doing my trills.  My hands are too tense and I end up doing slow jerky trills.  I can only do them for a short while before I start messing up.  Any tips/comments?

I NEED HELP!

[Renee]

practice trills slowly and use comfortable fingering.When you start messing up stop for a minute and then start back eventually you can play them up to tempo with no mistakes.Good luck

[ted]

There appear to be two schools of thought. One uses pure finger power and the other employs some sort of wrist help. The former takes a longer time to develop but I think the musical effect is better. Let's face it, for double note trills between adjacent fingers you can't use wrist anyway.

My suggestion is never to strain, keep light and flexible with full finger strokes without pushing down to the keybed. Aim for a musical effect, not speed, otherwise you might as well play a typewriter. Try to incorporate your trills into some creative improvisation because this willl make you relax more. Don't allow one particular aspect of technique to dominate.

[mojohk]

I have this problem too.  Try playing slow, with and without rotation.  That's were the wrist comes into play--it helps "rotate" your hand.  Otherwise, you really shouldn't use any other part of your body for trills besides your fingers.  Trills are subtle, fragile ornaments--they require subtle and very little movement.  Keep close to the keyboard--that is, keep your fingers always near the surface, don't play deep, but just barely "touch" the keys so that the notes come out.   Keep even the fingers at minimum movement--don't pull them up high.  It's also a good idea to practice all fingerings, doubles, etc.  They come up WAY too often in pieces to ignore.  I hope this helps!

[Diabolos]

I had this problem, too. Besides pure finger power and wrist rotating there's another factor that could help: Don't play these trill with the same 2 fingers, use a fingering that makes a fast steady change possible, like 1-2-1-3-1-2-1-3...etc.

Give it a try, it might help!  Good luck!

[p1an0]

Try to do them with 1-3-1-3-1-3 etc.. and let your wrist be flexible to help your fingers with moving to right and left sides...

[ClassicalPiano2002]

there are a combination of fingerings you can use... i have a technique book that teaches what are referred to as "Mozart Trill"

you can go at them   ...  1-3-1-3-1-3
                                      1-2-1-2-1-2
                                      3-2-3-2-3-2
                    i dont like this one    3-4-3-4-3

which ever is most comfortable

[Dr.Love]

Try rolling your wrists while playing trills, it helps alot especially when your tense.

[Nana_Ama]

Try to relax  becuase if you don't you could seriously injure yourself and thats no fun!  Myabe you should concentrate too hard on it. Using the fingering 1-3 might help

[rph108]

Lol. I dont think you can injure yourself by doing trills. At least Ive never heard of it.
Concerning trills, Ive found that everyones hands are different. My hands are bigger and pretty good for octaves. They are not very good for trills though. Ive had to do many excercises to get them up to shape. For me I used Hanon. He has a million trill "preparatory" excercises.

[rph108]

And he has a trill excercise too.