I saw someone asking questions about practicing lip trills on the horn list and though that here might be a good place to talk about how I do it.
Note - I do the other exercises they mentioned as well - the Kopprasch and stuff from Farkas book.
I play a long tone at the lowest part of the trill range (say middle space A on the F horn). In the middle of the long tone I "pop" up to B and then back again to A as fast as I can - just once! It's really gotta be fast! No help from the valves, it looks something like this:
AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa....
See the B in the middle? Fast.
I do it several times and then move up... Bb, B, C, D, E etc.
Then I start over again and instead of one "pop" in the middle, I do two. So going back to A, it would look like this:
AaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaBABAaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.....
The important part is that the change between the B and A is explosive and absolutely as fast as it can be. If you can't do one "pop" really fast, don't move on to two.
I then repeat the exercise with 3, 4, 8 and indefinite pops. I never move on until the pops are fast and even.
This is how I learned to trill like a frkn flute player.
Practicing Lip Trills
I can trill 3 different ways.
1) Just oscillate the lips between 2 pitches as fast as I can (this takes practice).
This yields a decent trill but not an explosively fast one.
2) Chew your carrots! Move the jaw up and down. This will work only if your embouchure has some
degree of taughtness. If not, the note won't change.
This is a great way to trill.
3) For really explosively fast trills: I say AAEEAAEEAAEEAAEEAAEE and move my tongue (it even touches
my bottom lip and may move it a bit!) But I can trill this way very fast and up to FFF.
Aleks Ozolins
NYC
lip trills
Y'all should get a hold of Doug Hill's book "From Vibrato to Trills to Tremolos for the Horn player." It's available from reallygoodmusic.com. A tutorial for anyone trying to learn to trill, and really worthwhile exercises to perfect trills if you can already do 'em.
read your comment
hey, so have you tried the method book out? If you did what did you think of its results? Was the teaching approach in a way that was simple for a student to understand? And most importantly was it fun? Would like to hear from your expireance. please!
DO NOT CHEW THE
DO NOT CHEW THE TRILL
REPEAT
DO NOT CHEW THE TRILL
I don't mean to be absolutist about this but this technique is tantamount to pressing harder to play higher.
A good way to lip trill that I've found which is largely agreed upon by teachers such as William Capps (former teacher of mine) and a few others is the AaaEeeeAaaEeee method. This is a way to quickly change the speed of the air coming out of your throat.
Notes are changed by changing the speed of the air pushed through your lips not really by lip tightness.
when you go AaaEeeAaaEee your tongue is moving up and down quickly which changes the size of your throat. Since you're pushing air constantly, changing the size of the opening of your throat will change the speed of the air quickly, back and forth between 2 harmonics giving the lip trill.
It's easier to see in a picture.
Just go AaaEeeAaaEee and you'll get it sooner or later.
Make the Air do the work.
"Fill up the 50 gallon water barrel"
-William Capps
Compatible suggestion
I think that the original post was suggesting something similar. Where the original post says "pop", that's where you change from Aaa to Eeee. The innovation of the original post is that you impose a practice method on the underlying technique. In the middle of a long tone Aaaaaa, use tongue, throat and lip muscle to move to the higher note (pop!). Focus on doing one pop, and doing it fast, before doing two pops. Focus on doing two pops close together before doing three pops.
I've actually found that
I've actually found that doing the trill with the tongue is just as bad as chewing. It enforces and (whether you know it or not) uses the bad techniques of trilling using things that Philip Farkas says, like throat gargling, chin shaking, etc. The only true way to do a lip trill correctly and with the smooth pitch change that woodwind players achieve easily is to treat the trill as a true slur between the notes. What I found to work is that you must anchor the mouthpiece on the top lip and use the bottom lip to bounce off of the air stream. The hard part about this is that it makes your mouth desperate to start the trill with the chin.
DO NOT MOVE YOUR CHIN AT ALL WHEN YOU TRILL.
It doesn't work and will just make you press harder into the mouthpiece. Basically, the sensation comes from combining a few different feelings. You must anchor the top lip with the mouthpiece. The bottom lip has to have every bit of control, and you can't think about the chin at all. Work hard to try to focus all of your lip (I hesitate using this word) tension into the corners of the bottom lip. It takes practice to figure out exactly where this tightness should sit and how tight your lips SHOULD be before it actually can work. After this, you must blow air but manipulate the air stream only with the bottom lip. It will feel like chewing, but in observation of the mirror (if you're doing it correctly), then you your chin should not be moving at all. It take time and energy, don't give up in a month if you still can't do it! The tongue should rest in a place in the mouth where it is totally unnoticed to achieve desired results. Hopefully this will help someone!
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