Teaching Trills

July 7, 2005 at 11:37 AM · Try the DOUNIS exercises for trills. They start with basic open to first finger trills followed by trills in 3rds 6ths and octaves. You'll find these in the "Violin Players Daily dozen" op.18.

Not sure if this series is still in print.

July 7, 2005 at 04:22 PM · a .pdf file of the Dounis Daily Dozen is available here:

ftp://jsbchorales.net/pdf/daily_dozen.pdf

Use with caution. The comment I hear most frequently associated with Dounis' DD is that doing to much of it can wreck your left hand.

I've been noticing that I have to start doing some trill work for the piece I'll be coached on at camp next week. For some reason it really helps me to focus my attention & energy on the lifting of the trill finger rather than the placing of it.

July 7, 2005 at 05:55 PM · Craig! Signore! Long time no see! Drop me a line/call sometime soon, ok?

As for trills, one little pointer I've found that helped a couple of students was to tell them to focus on the LIFTING portion of the trill action, rather than on the downward motion. I tell the little kids, for example, to imagine that the fingerboard is super-hot. The finger drops down to the "superheated" surface, is immediately scorched and flies up again, in the manner of someone testing an iron.

As for specific exercises, there's basically even and uneven trils. Uneven exercises involve playing a double (or even triple) dotted base note and the shortest possible trill note, repeatedly, in place of actual trills. The even-note method is basically to work up speed from even alternating sixteenths, to sixteenth triplets, to thirty-seconds, to thirty-second triplets to unmeasured trills.

Hope this helps.

July 7, 2005 at 08:30 PM · Kreutzer ## 15 and 19 are good for trills.

July 7, 2005 at 11:57 PM · I believe it was Sevcik (sic?) who wrote an entire book on trills. I know I had an assignment in this book every week for several years when I was a kid.

I'll do some research to see if the book is still available, then I'll get back to this board if I'm successful.

July 8, 2005 at 12:23 AM · Daniel, I was going to suggest that same Sevcik book. I did it weekly as well, and as a result developed very very strong trills. It's a good finger strengthening book too. I'm not sure which opus it is, but I'm pretty sure it's still available.

July 8, 2005 at 02:23 AM · It is Sevcik Prepatory Trill Studies, Op. 7. I worked with a few pages from it, too, in fact.