Today you’re going to learn how to do super fast trills on the piano. You’ll first learn the exact form and motion to do the trill and then I’ll teach you the exact techniques and practice strategies.
If you don’t know what a trill is, it’s when you go between two notes that are right next to each other really fast.
Part 1
For the form, the most important thing is that you keep a relaxed wrist and a relaxed hand. The easiest way to get a relaxed hand is to keep your wrist in motion. Your wrist should always be doing a circular motion – going down and out and then up and in the entire time you’re doing the trill.
I have an analogy to help you think through this further. You know when you stand in the same place for an hour you get really tired and sore and start cramping up? But when you’re walking around, you don’t seem tired at all? It’s the same thing with the trill.
If you park your wrist in one spot and just try to do the trill with your fingers, you’re going to tense up, you’re not going to get it fast and even, but if you constantly have that rotation, you’ll stay relaxed and that’s how you keep it even and fast.
Part 2
For the second part of the form you want your fingers to be straighter than normal.
A lot of piano teachers teach curved fingers because most piano players starting out have completely flat fingers. However, when you do trills, you don’t want your fingers completely flat or very curved – you want them slightly curved. This will make it easier to perform the movement.
Part 3
In step 3 you want to keep your fingers close to the key bed, which is where the keys hit the bottom.
You don’t want to lift your fingers high off the keys because then they have more distance to travel and you’re not going to be able to play them as fast.
You also want the key to barely get to the top before you push it down again to play the next note in the trill.
Those are the three essential pieces of playing lightning-fast trills on piano.
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