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To close our look at trills we hear from two more recent publications, and I have an important note to add at the end.
Facial movements will be visible
Frøydis Ree Wekre feels lip trills are an excellent way to build strength, and has exercises to develop trills in Thoughts on Playing the Horn Well. She encourages attention to the following points.
Be sure to keep the upper lip free (no pressure or minimal pressure) to vibrate and change pitches easily.
Some players recommend a conscious use of syllables with help from the tongue: da-i-a-i-a-i-a. However, I think that the lips, with some help from the jaw, can do most of the job.
For louder dynamics, more facial movements will be visible.
That last point is one that is an important one in relation to reality. Some students struggle trying to follow conventional wisdom on keeping the face still, but a bit more movement can solve the problems.
The best trill exercises are not the traditional ones
As to what exercises to use to practice trills Wekre emphasizes “Avoid the type that starts with slow notes (quarters) and only gets to the fast action when you are out of breath.” HMMM, sounds a bit like a lot of the exercises in a lot of the books … which in reality tie some players up in knots. I often call what she recommends “lip flips,” and this approach is certainly worth a try by anyone working on trills. Lip flips? If you wish to see what they are, you will need to buy the book!
The ideal time to learn to trill is…
Douglas Hill has an interesting personal aside on lip trills as he begins his examination of the topic in Collected Thoughts on Teaching and Learning, Creativity, and Horn Performance.
For some reason, this particular technique causes a great deal of grief for many students. I learned it before anyone told me it was difficult to do. That, I believe, is an important point. To believe something is difficult causes one to try too hard. I believe that lip trills are some of the most relaxing physical gestures that we do, or at least they should be.
I’m pretty sure I also had largely worked out my trills before I knew they were hard. Working somewhat in isolation at a small college in Kansas was in fact a helpful thing, I did not pick up the dread of trills being difficult that so many seem to have. This is where what books say and what teachers say can lead you astray. You will try hard to do something, but actually the suggestions won’t necessarily work for you and can simply give you a complex.
Introducing the tongue as a key element
Hill continues,
A key component in understanding how they need to work should involve a rethinking and renaming. They should be thought of as “lip/tongue/air” trills. The procedure involves all three aspects of your playing in coordination with each other, so that none of them have to work too hard. The biggest problem is usually when the student exerts extreme lip-flexing between two neighboring notes. Notes which are usually a breeze to administer when slurred during a scale passage.
Hill suggests a method of practicing trills that begins with aiming at the note between the trilled notes, feeling the break between the notes, and moving to longer and longer series of flips of “tah-eh-yah” figures. At the end of his discussion he suggests another possible new name for the lip trill, “flip trills.”
Hill goes into more detail in terms of text and exercises in his later publication, From Trills to Tremolo to Vibrato. For those interested in more of his approach, this is worth tracking down. This book is available from the publisher.
Another very important element: your horn and mouthpiece
There will be a point for many that trilling becomes a frustration. They try everything, nothing really helps.
The element that might finally help is try to trill on a different mouthpiece, and also on a different horn. Some horns and mouthpieces and combinations of horn/mouthpiece are just stiff, much too “slotty” to produce a good lip trill.
As to finding that perfect horn and mouthpiece, there are certain etudes and exercises that can be very helpful and revealing. I would highly suggest reading and considering what I have to say in this recent article:
This serving again as a reminder that sometimes it is not you, sometimes it is actually a physical equipment issue that is the problem.
In the end, each player is an individual and will have to sort out trill technique, and hopefully the ideas in these articles will be of help.
We are near the end of this series! The next topics are muting and stopping.
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