@@valgcaYes, the link above takes you to a signup for my newsletter. Once you sign up, both the practice planner guide and a piece of original intermediate music will be automatically emailed to you! If you're not at all interested in the newsletter, you can always unsubscribe as soon as you receive your gift, although I'd appreciate it if you stuck around! If you're looking for the sheets that go with this video, they are available in the description above. Thanks!
Trills are tough at any level no matter how long you’ve played! I’ve played for 30 years and I still need to take time to practice them and keep them in top top shape. Just keep at it for a few minutes each day and they will get better 👍🏻
Thank you so much! I was assigned Etude 9 from op 299! Exciting right? :D (ps: can you teach how to play fast? It's like my thumbs are weighty unmovable anchors.
I'm just beginning to learn Mozart's Concerto 9. There are a lot of trills, beautiful long delightful trills! I have heard conflicting advice as to whether they should begin on the note or on the upper note? The performances I listen to all seem follow the former.
Scott, great question! Mozart's trills in repertoire should always start on the upper note. There might be a few occasions this isn't true, but they very few and far between!
Great exercises for trills. However, I was wondering how to execute trills when you have to hold a note down while playing the trill with the same hand. Specifically Bach Little Prelude in E Minor, BWV 941 Bar 10. Thanks.
Hi Sinden! Thanks again for tuning in to the livestream this week! I'd suggest taking your question, first, out of context from the piece. Work on a trill holding middle C down with the thumb and using 2 and 3 to trill E and F. Also try the same pitches but use 2 and 4 for the trill. The goal is to still feel BOTH finger articulation as well as rotation to play through the trill. By necessity the "balance" between both of those techniques will need to favor a bit more finger movement, and the rotation will need to be anchored by the thumb rather than freely across the hand. As always, begin slowly and don't worry about increasing the speed of the trill. It will came naturally, with time, as your hand is ready. When you feel fairly confident doing this exercise, try transposing it around, and then also put it back in the context of the piece. I'd suggest using thumb on the F#, hopefully your teacher will also agree with that (if you have one). Using thumb twice in a row causes a break in the connection of the lower line, but I'd argue that a small break will actually produce a more authentically baroque sound than attempting full finger legato here. Thumb on F# also allows you to trill, probably, with 2 and 3. If you instead play 2 on F#, the trill becomes *significantly* more difficult.
Learning sonata 16 and I’m struggling with the trill in bar 4. I saw you tell someone trills start on upper note? The note is F with a trill symbol. That means I should start on G? I’ve seen videos where it differs. Lang lang starts on G I believe but everyone else I’ve seen start on F. Thanks!
Hey Sean! Yes, the general rule that works 99% of the time is that in music prior to 1800, trills should begin on the upper note and trill down to the main note. After 1800, the rule began to change and trills begin on the main note instead and trill up. The grey area that is almost impossible to know is that in some cases, it is actually better to trill in Mozart from main note and up. In the piece you are practicing in particular, the argument can be made that since the melody itself comes from a G (the upper note of the trill to come), it may be one of the rare cases where the trill begins on the main pitch instead, because if G is played as the first note of the trill, we don't end up hearing the descending melodic line as well. Given that people like Lang Lang play from G, and Maria Joao Pires plays from F... there's a lot of credibility to either choice! We can't ask Mozart himself, so we can be informed of historical context and then we choose how we'd like to interpret it ourselves! Btw, congrats on such a hugely successful channel! It's an honor to have you here in the comments!
You can definitely start it slowly as a beginner and use it for many many years into an advanced level. The difficulty all lies in the speed you are working at/towards!
You also commented on the rotation video, so you had to know your comment would elicit a lengthy response 😂 In short, if you look at any one part of technique under a microscope without the whole or knowledge of the whole, each aspect individually could be deemed “absurd”. But together they create the singular playing mechanism which ends up being anything but. Of course isolated finger movements are needed at the piano. Without it, we’d be playing with fists or very similar. There’s a big difference between “bad” teaching of isolation, which includes things like lifting the fingers, or the thought that the fingers have strength/muscle that can be developed, or encouraging pressing in an effort to feel the fingers differently. But good teaching of isolation is not only positive, but I’d argue necessary, to play even a simple song at the piano. With more advanced students, I prescribe a few exercises from Dohnanyi and Cortot to continue to aid and challenge the development in this regard. For beginners I use something based around the close touch Lechetizky approach. Can a trill be performed with rotation, most definitely. Do I teach that to a beginner, whom this video is for? No, because they don’t yet know how to control each individual finger. Rotation would just be cleaning up half the disease, but leaving the root cause never treated. Same with teaching basic chord voicing, so that we can bring out any note we’d desire. Rotation and how we shift weight can help with consistency, but it will never solve the root of the problem, which is that the fingers aren’t isolated from the motion of the arm and wrist. A less proficient student will just let all fingers fall with the same weight and same speed as the wrist. A more advanced student will know how to individually attack certain fingers and not others. And again, once that’s accomplished we can add more predictability to the effort with shifts in lateral rotation and in weight, but employing that without control over each finger won’t make much difference.
@@thepianocornertpcI was just listening to Michelangeli’s Ondine on your channel. Lovely performance! His tone and articulation is always so crisp and defined. Personally I prefer a bit more of an ethereal interpretation of that movement, but it’s a wonderful performance nonetheless. I’d be curious to know how he would teach the technique to play the opening. To me, it seems to be one of the pinnacles of minute finger articulation in all of the repertoire. Any insights? Did you have an opportunity to study that piece with him? Or a similar passage in another?
@@PianistAcademy1 He was one of my teachers in the 1970s and early 1980s. More ethereal? You obviously never witnessed him "live." Audiences were collectively transported to the devachanic world. Unfortunately, recording techniques at that time didn't always do justice to what was really going on. And...sorry, but there is no finger articulation at all in the opening of Ondine. On the contrary, minute controlled subtle rotation(not visible) and minute "main morte" a la Liszt. Consider the hand movement as an oscillating vibrating unity. Nothing isolated. I wrote extensively on my blog (in 5 languages) about piano matters. But unfortunately, I had a heart attack a few weeks ago, so my blog is temporarily offline. Take care and stay healthy. By the way, I have taught more than 30 years of fantastic talent in Asia. 🙏🙏🌹🌹
@@thepianocornertpc no I never did hear him live. Rotation sounds great for that opening! I haven’t played Gaspard myself, but wow that makes it seem a whole lot more attainable with that approach! I wish there were a video of him playing, because everyone I can find online all combines rotation with individual finger articulation. Sometimes quite visibly with 5, but also with the lower fingers as well. I haven’t found a pianist truly playing it with only rotation. I’ll have to read through it myself and see what happens employing both extremes and also modulating both to each other.
The difficulty of this only arises with the speed asked of it. Just like the response to your comment on another vid, this would be something easily covered within the first month of piano lessons for a complete beginner... playing this, even playing the 4-5 motion, as long as it's just quarter notes at 60bpm or slower, is completely doable for the early beginner. One of the fantastic benefits of this, just like scales, is that the exercise can grow as you grow... so even an advanced student might still use this trill exercise, but instead of playing it in quarters at 60, they might play 16ths at Q=160.
![How to master trills on piano? [TUTORIAL] - Greg Niemczuk.](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/PEP7WbtEVwM/mqdefault.jpg)
🆓 ➡ Want to learn how to accomplish more during your practice AND get some free sheet music?? ➡➡ bit.ly/FreePianistDownloads
THis link did not work today, it only took me to the page to sign up for the newsletter, I would really like to get your beinner sheets.
@@valgcaYes, the link above takes you to a signup for my newsletter. Once you sign up, both the practice planner guide and a piece of original intermediate music will be automatically emailed to you! If you're not at all interested in the newsletter, you can always unsubscribe as soon as you receive your gift, although I'd appreciate it if you stuck around!
If you're looking for the sheets that go with this video, they are available in the description above.
Thanks!
Thank you, I found them. I enjoy your teaching style very much.
@@PianistAcademy1
Straight to the point thankyou! Am sick of people waffling on for hours!!
My pleasure! Thanks for watching!
I don't know how to thank you for these academic lessons
Just you watching and finding them helpful is thanks enough!
New subscriber here! Excited for future lessons/videos! 🎼🎹
Awesome, thanks LadyP!
Thank you!
You are welcome!
Merci for this.
You're welcome!
Good thanks
Thanks for watching, Constance!
Title: beginners lesson
Me: playing for 8 years and I can’t even play trills properly, so I look for tutorial
Trills are tough at any level no matter how long you’ve played! I’ve played for 30 years and I still need to take time to practice them and keep them in top top shape. Just keep at it for a few minutes each day and they will get better 👍🏻
Thank you so much! I was assigned Etude 9 from op 299! Exciting right? :D (ps: can you teach how to play fast? It's like my thumbs are weighty unmovable anchors.
Awesome! Have fun with it! I'll see what I can think of about speed increases. :-)
I'm just beginning to learn Mozart's Concerto 9. There are a lot of trills, beautiful long delightful trills! I have heard conflicting advice as to whether they should begin on the note or on the upper note? The performances I listen to all seem follow the former.
Scott, great question! Mozart's trills in repertoire should always start on the upper note. There might be a few occasions this isn't true, but they very few and far between!
@@PianistAcademy1 thanks for your helpful response! 👏
Great exercises for trills. However, I was wondering how to execute trills when you have to hold a note down while playing the trill with the same hand. Specifically Bach Little Prelude in E Minor, BWV 941 Bar 10. Thanks.
Hi Sinden! Thanks again for tuning in to the livestream this week! I'd suggest taking your question, first, out of context from the piece. Work on a trill holding middle C down with the thumb and using 2 and 3 to trill E and F. Also try the same pitches but use 2 and 4 for the trill. The goal is to still feel BOTH finger articulation as well as rotation to play through the trill. By necessity the "balance" between both of those techniques will need to favor a bit more finger movement, and the rotation will need to be anchored by the thumb rather than freely across the hand. As always, begin slowly and don't worry about increasing the speed of the trill. It will came naturally, with time, as your hand is ready.
When you feel fairly confident doing this exercise, try transposing it around, and then also put it back in the context of the piece. I'd suggest using thumb on the F#, hopefully your teacher will also agree with that (if you have one). Using thumb twice in a row causes a break in the connection of the lower line, but I'd argue that a small break will actually produce a more authentically baroque sound than attempting full finger legato here. Thumb on F# also allows you to trill, probably, with 2 and 3. If you instead play 2 on F#, the trill becomes *significantly* more difficult.
@@PianistAcademy1 Thank you so much! I gave you a "like" but you deserve ❤❤❤❤❤
Learning sonata 16 and I’m struggling with the trill in bar 4. I saw you tell someone trills start on upper note? The note is F with a trill symbol.
That means I should start on G? I’ve seen videos where it differs. Lang lang starts on G I believe but everyone else I’ve seen start on F. Thanks!
Hey Sean! Yes, the general rule that works 99% of the time is that in music prior to 1800, trills should begin on the upper note and trill down to the main note. After 1800, the rule began to change and trills begin on the main note instead and trill up. The grey area that is almost impossible to know is that in some cases, it is actually better to trill in Mozart from main note and up. In the piece you are practicing in particular, the argument can be made that since the melody itself comes from a G (the upper note of the trill to come), it may be one of the rare cases where the trill begins on the main pitch instead, because if G is played as the first note of the trill, we don't end up hearing the descending melodic line as well. Given that people like Lang Lang play from G, and Maria Joao Pires plays from F... there's a lot of credibility to either choice! We can't ask Mozart himself, so we can be informed of historical context and then we choose how we'd like to interpret it ourselves!
Btw, congrats on such a hugely successful channel! It's an honor to have you here in the comments!
@@PianistAcademy1 thank you!!! This is awesome. Happy to be here
Mozart’s trills are the trickiest, most difficult to execute in all of piano literature.
They are a challenge!
ohh these are what my teacher was talking about in my previous lesson, what a coincidence lol
Nice!
what level is this exercise for? advance?
You can definitely start it slowly as a beginner and use it for many many years into an advanced level. The difficulty all lies in the speed you are working at/towards!
💖🎹💖🎹💖🎹💖
Thanks, Kalika!
There is more to it than that.
Really? May be, you didn't read....it says beginner lesson...
Isolated finger movements? Really? Oh dear.
You also commented on the rotation video, so you had to know your comment would elicit a lengthy response 😂
In short, if you look at any one part of technique under a microscope without the whole or knowledge of the whole, each aspect individually could be deemed “absurd”. But together they create the singular playing mechanism which ends up being anything but.
Of course isolated finger movements are needed at the piano. Without it, we’d be playing with fists or very similar. There’s a big difference between “bad” teaching of isolation, which includes things like lifting the fingers, or the thought that the fingers have strength/muscle that can be developed, or encouraging pressing in an effort to feel the fingers differently. But good teaching of isolation is not only positive, but I’d argue necessary, to play even a simple song at the piano. With more advanced students, I prescribe a few exercises from Dohnanyi and Cortot to continue to aid and challenge the development in this regard. For beginners I use something based around the close touch Lechetizky approach.
Can a trill be performed with rotation, most definitely. Do I teach that to a beginner, whom this video is for? No, because they don’t yet know how to control each individual finger. Rotation would just be cleaning up half the disease, but leaving the root cause never treated.
Same with teaching basic chord voicing, so that we can bring out any note we’d desire. Rotation and how we shift weight can help with consistency, but it will never solve the root of the problem, which is that the fingers aren’t isolated from the motion of the arm and wrist. A less proficient student will just let all fingers fall with the same weight and same speed as the wrist. A more advanced student will know how to individually attack certain fingers and not others. And again, once that’s accomplished we can add more predictability to the effort with shifts in lateral rotation and in weight, but employing that without control over each finger won’t make much difference.
🤭
@@thepianocornertpcI was just listening to Michelangeli’s Ondine on your channel. Lovely performance! His tone and articulation is always so crisp and defined. Personally I prefer a bit more of an ethereal interpretation of that movement, but it’s a wonderful performance nonetheless. I’d be curious to know how he would teach the technique to play the opening. To me, it seems to be one of the pinnacles of minute finger articulation in all of the repertoire. Any insights? Did you have an opportunity to study that piece with him? Or a similar passage in another?
@@PianistAcademy1 He was one of my teachers in the 1970s and early 1980s. More ethereal? You obviously never witnessed him "live." Audiences were collectively transported to the devachanic world. Unfortunately, recording techniques at that time didn't always do justice to what was really going on. And...sorry, but there is no finger articulation at all in the opening of Ondine. On the contrary, minute controlled subtle rotation(not visible) and minute "main morte" a la Liszt. Consider the hand movement as an oscillating vibrating unity. Nothing isolated. I wrote extensively on my blog (in 5 languages) about piano matters. But unfortunately, I had a heart attack a few weeks ago, so my blog is temporarily offline. Take care and stay healthy. By the way, I have taught more than 30 years of fantastic talent in Asia. 🙏🙏🌹🌹
@@thepianocornertpc no I never did hear him live. Rotation sounds great for that opening! I haven’t played Gaspard myself, but wow that makes it seem a whole lot more attainable with that approach! I wish there were a video of him playing, because everyone I can find online all combines rotation with individual finger articulation. Sometimes quite visibly with 5, but also with the lower fingers as well. I haven’t found a pianist truly playing it with only rotation. I’ll have to read through it myself and see what happens employing both extremes and also modulating both to each other.
I hate trill. It is so hard.
Easy? No.
The difficulty of this only arises with the speed asked of it. Just like the response to your comment on another vid, this would be something easily covered within the first month of piano lessons for a complete beginner... playing this, even playing the 4-5 motion, as long as it's just quarter notes at 60bpm or slower, is completely doable for the early beginner. One of the fantastic benefits of this, just like scales, is that the exercise can grow as you grow... so even an advanced student might still use this trill exercise, but instead of playing it in quarters at 60, they might play 16ths at Q=160.
I bet he thought 'phew' when the 4 and 5 was done.
Haha, always!