Exercise 3 is our introduction to trilling and an exercise that teaches your mouth the most efficient position to be in.
To learn to trill we begin by using very hard accents. You cannot overdo it! Really blast air all of a sudden by pushing really hard from Place #6. If you can't do that go back and read the articles on breathing and do the exercises. When you can make the clean slurs with hard accents then put them on every note. By the end of this the muscles in Place #6 should be tired.
Without the extremely hard breath accents this is just another bunch of trills. With it it can improve your playing immensely in a short time.
The hard accents blow your mouth into the right shape. It takes decades of practice with good instruction to find the shape, but if you use the air properly here you can experience it in two seconds. You know it happens when the notes are brick shaped and change suddenly from one to the other with a pop. That pop is the sound wave breaking or joining and we love to hear it. It means things are working efficiently.
It is imperative that the lower note be just as loud and have the same tone color as the first note. After we have mastered the trill a bit we back off on some of the accents and play the ones that are written.
For beginning students have them trill between lower notes, perhaps bottom line E and the G above it. For advanced players practice as written and higher and lower.
Make the last note very long and decrescendo as much as possible without changing tone color to make sure you are controlling the air from Place #6.
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Without the extremely hard breath accents this is just another bunch of trills. With it it can improve your playing immensely in a short time.
The hard accents blow your mouth into the right shape. It takes decades of practice with good instruction to find the shape, but if you use the air properly here you can experience it in two seconds. You know it happens when the notes are brick shaped and change suddenly from one to the other with a pop. That pop is the sound wave breaking or joining and we love to hear it. It means things are working efficiently.
It is imperative that the lower note be just as loud and have the same tone color as the first note. After we have mastered the trill a bit we back off on some of the accents and play the ones that are written.
For beginning students have them trill between lower notes, perhaps bottom line E and the G above it. For advanced players practice as written and higher and lower.
Make the last note very long and decrescendo as much as possible without changing tone color to make sure you are controlling the air from Place #6.
You didn't say, but I assume this is not supposed to be a lip trill.
ReplyDeleteI'm surprised you would have beginning students trill a minor third from bottom line E to the G. Or perhaps you were saying that beginning students should trill the same interval distance, but from E to F#, F to G, F# to G#, or G to A.
Hi Marnix,
ReplyDeleteThis is an accelerated way of learning to trill. Instead of just practicing going back and forth between the notes we blow hard breath accents to get the feel of blowing AT the notes, and it helps to blow your mouth into the right shape.
The important thing isn't the interval, it's getting used to moving from one partial to the other using the air instead of the face, or as we like to say, from one note with X sound waves to a note with X + 1 sound waves.
It's all about training the air! The lips will go along for the ride.
Thanks so much for the questions!