Best exercises to increase trill speed?

[spenstar]

I can troll at a decent speed with my thumb, index finger, and middle finger, but my 4th and 5th fingers are a bit slower. I'm working on the 3rd movement of the moonlight sonata and the part where there is an octave with a trill at the top, I'd like to hold the bottom note while trilling. So what are some good exercises to increase the 4th and 5th finger trill speed?

[chopinlover01]

Don't. The two are connected on the same tendon and you can damage it by overworking it.

[outin]

I can troll at a decent speed ...

Ya think 

[reiyza]

Ya think 

Good sense of humor if I might say so myself. )


I'm also looking at this 3rd movement. I've done a search about this in this forum for quite a while, and I've read a good suggestion of using fingers 3 and 4 to do the trill(since I have small hands, I can't reach it). I'm also Interested on the opinions of others, please post guys.

[adodd81802]

.

[reiyza]

3/5 looks promising, but problem is we're still holding a lower note with finger 1. For a person with small hands the 3/5 seems to be quite a stretch. Can't an individual playing this piece, cheat by holding the lower note with the pedal then rapidly change to 2-3? Is it possible.?


I'm mechanically deficient so making the change is incredibly difficult for me. Had anyone done this anyway.

[pjjslp]

I can troll at a decent speed with my thumb, index finger, and middle finger, but my 4th and 5th fingers are a bit slower. I'm working on the 3rd movement of the moonlight sonata and the part where there is an octave with a trill at the top, I'd like to hold the bottom note while trilling. So what are some good exercises to increase the 4th and 5th finger trill speed?

Can I ask why you want to hold the bottom note of the octave? I do not, and once I play it anywhere near tempo, you would never hear the difference. I have not worked on 4/5 trill speed in any way other than repeating those specific trills hundreds of times very slowly. Admittedly, I have small hands and therefore do not have the option of holding the bottom note, but I have a hard time imagining it being very comfortable unless your hands are huge.

[spenstar]

Thanks for the replies. I didn't realize you could actually cause problems for the tendon by doing that. I'm lucky enough to have large hands so I will just use the 3/5 trill fingering

[briansaddleback]

I always use 2-4 , 1-2 , 1-3 , and on occasion 2-3.

If there is any need for 4-5 or 3-5 or anything strange that means I am not working on that sort of repertoire yet.

[louispodesta]

I can troll at a decent speed with my thumb, index finger, and middle finger, but my 4th and 5th fingers are a bit slower. I'm working on the 3rd movement of the moonlight sonata and the part where there is an octave with a trill at the top, I'd like to hold the bottom note while trilling. So what are some good exercises to increase the 4th and 5th finger trill speed?

Unlike those who criticize me for stressing "original performance practice," the purposive nature of my predicate is as follows:

1)  To clarify what has not been generally known in regards how a particular piece was originally played "and taught."

2)  To have any particular artist or student adapt that to their own situation.

3)  In regards the OP's question, there is a difference between a traditional back and forth (from finger to finger) trill, and then something which was in the 19th Century was known as a "shake."

Therefore, in my opinion, the measures the OP is inquiring about involve:

1)  A hard shake with fingers four and five.

2)  This should be done with maximum body centered arm weight, followed with immediate quick release.

Charles Ascbrenner's website (student of Casedesus, Adele Marcus, and Nadia Boulanger) provides any true student with a real life Pedagogue who has spent his entire teaching life daily studying piano topics such as this. https://pulsepatterning.com/

I strongly advise any of those who wish to share in this "seasoned" pianist and teacher's experience and wisdom as to how to play these particular measures.

With Beethoven's pure sound board pianoforte, technically, this was not meant to be difficult.

[scientificpianopractise]

I think that "cheating" is important.  Everybody's hand is different and there is no way all pieces can be played by all hands perfectly.  Better to focus on the music than on impossible technique.

The 4-5 finger trills in Chopin Polonaise op. 53 I do with 3-4 and cheat by having the had jump from the thumb position.

In general, trills are at most twice the tapping speed of a finger but for some reason 4-5 is even slower than that.  Some say it has something to do with a tendon being common for the two fingers but I am not sure whether that is an explanation.

To practice the trill I would spend 15 seconds a day on it, that should do it.  To get all your technical practice in use my "Hanon in 60 seconds".

An aside - since the trill speed is set by the tapping frequency, the only way to increase the speed is to have fewer taps and the only way to do that is to trill 1-3-2-4-1-3-2-4.  But so far I have failed to make the "four finger trill" faster than a two finger trill.

[pianoplayer002]

This thread portrays it as if it was guaranteed to be dangerous to trill with 4-5 while holding down another key with the thumb.

It is not. It should be perfectly possible to play a healthy trill this way, if you can reach it.

However, it COULD be dangerous if you do it wrong, of course. If you feel tense or straining or in any way uncomfortable when doing it, you are doing it wrong. But trilling with 4-5 (or 3-4, or whatever) is not inherently dangerous.

[aliceinpianoland]

Hallo everybody!

I think this is my first post, but really don't have the time for a proper introduction of myself. I'll just say that I am an adult passioned piano (and classical music) student and that I am re-learning almost everything that I have taught as a kid regarding the art of piano playing and its technique. (Irrelevant, but in my language, Greek, the words art and technique are sharing the same root...) My teacher is a certified instructor of the Alexander's Techniqe, he has study several years according to the Taubman approach, also he is an active soloist.

I travel about 7 hours in a day for our lessons  I'm getting in such a trouble, not because I want to be a soloist when I grow up, meaning in my sixtees, but because he is the only teacher -among many that had a few lessons with- that manage to relieve me from the pain in my wrists when I was playing, due to the chronic misuse of my body, previous computer-related occupation, poor posture, tension etc... But that's not all! He manage to make me fly at the keyboard with a totaly knew and unexpected feeling of security and I am standing at this magical point of my pianism, in which I imagine the sound that I want and I am able to make the necessary movements to produce it...

Well, sorry for the actually big prelude, I got excited...  The point is that now you know everything needed in order to evaluate my point of view... which is:

In deed, it is very dangerous for your hands health, thus also for your soul's  to trill with 4th-5th while holding the thumb down. You could do it with rotations, but cause of the slave-finger, the thumb, you need double rotations. Rotations are not a simple concept, cause you have to rotate your hall arm, meaning to find your axis, to have basic knowledge of your bones, their joints and their allowed movements etc. Double rotations are more difficult to achieve... So, it's not a technique that you could learn on the spot, not even for Beethoven's sake...

My opinion is that your hands' happiness is more important than to play the score exactly as it is written and that the performance of a piece is judging by the >>>overall<<< sounds and the sonar atmosphere that the pianist creates - or fails to create... not by a trill. After all, you can cheat, by playing a little bit more forte -not more brutal - the thumb, so the note will sustain a little longer and enough for the time that trill's overtones will cover its absence! After all, we, as pianists, ought to create illusions!

My best wishes for your progress, your hand and your... trills and excuse me for the embezzlement of your post!

[pianoplayer002]

In deed, it is very dangerous for your hands health, thus also for your soul's   to trill with 4th-5th while holding the thumb down. You could do it with rotations, but cause of the slave-finger, the thumb, you need double rotations. Rotations are not a simple concept, cause you have to rotate your hall arm, meaning to find your axis, to have basic knowledge of your bones, their joints and their allowed movements etc. Double rotations are more difficult to achieve... So, it's not a technique that you could learn on the spot, not even for Beethoven's sake...

It is not inherently dangerous to trill with 4-5 while holding down the thumb, if you can reach it. See my previous post in this thread.

It is very difficult due to coordination issues, but it can be done perfectly healthy.

[keypeg]

Aliceinpianoland, WELCOME!   And thank you for the detailed description of your thoughts and experiences.  There is a lot to it, and above all, enough information to make it understandable.

[anamnesis]

It is not inherently dangerous to trill with 4-5 while holding down the thumb, if you can reach it. See my previous post in this thread.

It is very difficult due to coordination issues, but it can be done perfectly healthy.

I don't think she disagrees.  You yourself mentioned it could be dangerous if one is doing the incorrect coordination. Most people who find it difficult, find it so because they are doing a coordination that simply will not work.  There is a much a higher probability for them to injure themselves trying to exercise their way out of because at the moment they simply can't conceive of a way to do it safely. 


 

[aliceinpianoland]

Aliceinpianoland, WELCOME! Smiley  And thank you for the detailed description of your thoughts and experiences.  There is a lot to it, and above all, enough information to make it understandable.

Thank you so much! Nice to... decide to talk to you I was feeling a kind of pianistic solitude and now I'm already better 

I don't think she disagrees.  You yourself mentioned it could be dangerous if one is doing the incorrect coordination. Most people who find it difficult, find it so because they are doing a coordination that simply will not work.  There is a much a higher probability for them to injure themselves trying to exercise their way out of because at the moment they simply can't conceive of a way to do it safely. 

Thank you, anamnesis, that's exactly what I mean

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