Home › Forums › Teaching the Harp › Trills on harp
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diana-grubisic.
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February 5, 2009 at 7:57 pm #83412
julia robison
ParticipantWhat ist eh best way to do a trill on the harp?
February 5, 2009 at 8:42 pm #83413carl-swanson
ParticipantIt depends on the situation. There are times when you can trill using two hands, and others where a one handed trill is called for. In that case, I know of 4 ways to do a one handed trill that are used by various virtuoso harpists.
The queen of the one handed trill is Jana Boscova, and I’ve seen her use 3 different types of one handed trills. The most common one handed trill is just 21212121 etc. But that’s tiring, and not everybody can learn to do that. A variation on that is 213121312131 etc. That is much less tiring and I think is the way most people play a one handed trill when they have to. The third way is 432143214321 etc. In this case 2 and 1 repeat the notes that 4 and 3 just played. Stated another way, 4 and 2 play the lower note, and 3 and 1 play the upper note.
The 4th way, and this is used by Xavier de Maistre when he plays the Boildieu concerto, is to brace the thumb on the string next to the upper note of the trill and then strum the two notes of the trill with 3 and 2. So the trill is played 332233223322 etc. He swears that he can’t do a one handed trill and had to invent this method when he won the USA competition playing the Boildieu.
All of these take practice and a lot of work to learn. When done right, they all sound absolutely even, clear, and fast. I have sat 3 feet from Catherine Michel when she demonstrated a one handed trill using the 212121 method, and it was as fast as any two handed trill I have ever heard. I have sat next to Xavier in my living room when he demonstrated his strumming technique, and it was fast, clear and gorgeous.
February 5, 2009 at 11:25 pm #83414Elizabeth Volpé Bligh
ParticipantGreat tips on one-handed trills, Carl! I remember there was a previous thread on this, and I have been showing my students Xavier’s strummed trill ever since.
February 6, 2009 at 12:44 am #83415ParticipantElizabeth- That sounds like a great way to learn a two handed trill.
I have my own theory about one handed trills, which some people can do incredibly well and some can’t. And it has nothing to do with how advanced a harpist you are. Xavier is testement to that. Here’s my theory.
There was a program on Nova(Public Television) years ago that was about Olympic athletes, and it asked the question of why some athletes are great sprinters and others are great marathon runners. They removed a tiny amount of muscle tissue from numerous runners, some sprinters and some marathon, and tested the tissue. They already knew that all of us have two types of muscle tissue or cells in our bodies which are referred to as “fast twitch” and “slow twitch”. The fast twitch fiber gives you speed but not endurance. The slow twitch fiber gives you endurance but not great speed, or sustainable speed. What they found was that the sprinters had a very high percentage of fast twitch fibers in their bodies, and the marathon runners a high percentage of slow twitch.
As I watched this I thought, if that is true in the leg muscles, then it must be true elsewhere in the body as well. That to me explains why some musicians are capable of dizzying speed with little effort, and why these people can play things like one handed trills so well. For the same reason, other musicians, while capable of playing quite fast, with a lot of work, nevertheless have an upper limit speed-wise beyond which things just start to break down, no matter how hard or long they practice. I’m squarely in the second group. And apparently I’m in pretty good company. I used to envy those harpists that can play so fast but I don’t any more. I realized that when speed is so easy and so fast, these people tend to play everything too fast. Way too fast. I could name names! The hardest thing for them to do is hold a piece at the correct tempo.
But back to one handed trills. Renie says in her wonderful Methode that she was asked very often how one should practice to learn a one handed trill. And Renie admitted herself that not everyone is capable of doing one. But her suggestion is to start by practicing a 3 note turn, starting both on the bottom and on the top. When that gets comfortable, add one more note, then another, until you have 8 or 10 notes or more flying by.
February 6, 2009 at 2:34 pm #83416Karen Johns
ParticipantExcellent advice, Carl! Thank you so much- I fall into the second
February 6, 2009 at 3:49 pm #83417Mel Sandberg
ParticipantCarl, thanks for the advice.
February 6, 2009 at 4:54 pm #83418ParticipantMel- I used to be a slave to metronome markings. In my student days, if there was a metronome markingby Grandjany, Renie, Salzedo, whoever) I felt I HAD to achieve that speed or I’d be a complete failure. Most of the time the markings were out of reach.
After a hiatus of more than 20 years of not playing, I got back to it again, practicing a lot and working entirely on my own(i.e. no teacher). One of the things I decided was that I was not going to pay attention to metronome markings. I would let each piece find its own tempo. Without that hanging over my head I could focus entirely on how I wanted the piece to sound. When I’ve heard recordings made of my recitals, I’m sometimes surprised that the tempos are faster than I thought they were. But I think that happens to everybody. The point is, I came to realize that the tempo of a piece is bound to the rest of the interpretation. What you want to do with the piece will often dictate the tempo, and the faster the tempo the less you can do interpretatively. I can think of only one piece that I wish I could play but I just can’t play it at the speed that I believe it should go, and that is La Rossignol of Liszt/Renie.
February 6, 2009 at 7:42 pm #83419ParticipantIn reference to the opening trill of the Boeildieu…. Well, I have given the Xavier de Maistre trill a bash, or two, or three, and I can’t do it that way at all.
February 6, 2009 at 9:23 pm #83420ParticipantI’ve been told that Catherine Michel plays the opening trills of the Boildieu exactly as you describe, using the enharmonic note as well as the actual lower note to play the trill 312131213121. I’ve never played the Boildieu and I don’t have it in front of me right now so I can’t tell you much more than that.
All of these (4) ways of playing a trill(5 if you count the one just mentioned) require work and a lot of practice. It all comes down to muscle memory. I tried Xavier’s way of strumming the strings and got nowhere with it. I too would have to devote a lot of practice time to learning it. My sense when I tried it was-and I think this is true of most of the ways of playing a trill-that you have to learn to articulate the notes in a completely different way from how you normally play. In all but one of these ways, the fingers barely move, and most of the movement is in a rapidly oscillating wrist. In Xavier’s strumming technique, the finger articulation is very short and not at all down towards the palm. So I got the sense that if I really wanted to learn these trill techniques, I would have to work on developing a new muscle memory just for trills. And that takes time.
February 6, 2009 at 9:35 pm #83421ParticipantThanks for advising about that you believe Catherine Michel does it the same way. I am thrilled with my discovery of it.
February 6, 2009 at 11:11 pm #83422ParticipantThanks for the great tips, I appreciate it.
February 7, 2009 at 1:28 pm #83423ParticipantMel- I think it was Xavier who told me that Catherine does it that way. Either Xavier or Emmanuel Ceysson. But I think it was Xavier, because he studied with her.
February 7, 2009 at 8:36 pm #83424Saul Davis Zlatkovski
ParticipantI did not like the sound of the 323232 trill in one hand. You can do a two-handed trill with 32 32 or even 43 43 if you work to make them even. A sustained one-handed trill usually sounds lousy, without the freedom, phrasing and brilliance of a keyboard instrument, so abbreviating them and sustaining the last note 2312, or 3412, or 2121, or 3121, is in most cases, enough. Bouskava has a great shake, and so does David Watkins. But I don’t think it is the most musical approach. Harps have to do ornaments in their own way, which is not the same as on a harpsichord. I have been working on them a lot.
February 9, 2009 at 4:43 am #83425ParticipantWell I would be one happy camper if I could play one handed trills like Jana!
February 10, 2009 at 1:55 am #83426ParticipantAre you willing to do it for an hour a day? She might have, but I think you can with enough time, but it would be boring… I understand it is shaking the wrist back and forth, rocking between the fingers and not closing them.
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