Hi, are there any ways to practise and improve on double thrills? It seems so anatomically challenging and I can't seem to sustain it.

Oooh, I love double thrills. Triple thrills are even better!

j/k. I have trouble with double trills too. But I have more trouble with the kind of trill where two fingers are trilling, but a different finger on the same hand has to play something else. Those kind really annoy me (because they make me nuts).

Hi,

I'm currently working on the Mendelssohn Rondo Capricciosa, which has double trills in 2 places, e.g. RH:

B_A__B_A etc.
G_F#_G_F#

(Top line is top note, bottom line is bottom note)

The fingering in the manuscript says 41 to 32, but my piano teacher insists 51 to 42 is better (I'm not convinced!). Anyway, he's given me 2 drills which seem to work well...

Drill 1 is to avoid missing out lower notes:

G_B_A___B_F#_A_B_A repeated fast...etc.
_____F#_G______G_F#

And then playing the trill in groups of 3/5/7/9 etc. notes with stops - e.g. in 5's:

B_____A__B_A__B_A______B_A__B_A__B etc.
G_____F#_G_F#_G_F#____G_F#_G_F#_G

Hope that helps!

Mark

Ha, you can have the Barcarolle.

double trills? when I figure out how to trill evenly between fingers 3-4 and 4-5 to the point when it sounds like 1-2 or 2-3, I'll let you know.

Anyways, I think hand strength and finger strength play a big part. So if your hand is evenly strong where a trill with, say, fingers 3-4 are crisp, bright, and fast, then it would be easier to double trill than if you had weaker hands. (As is my case).

Good luck.

Haha Terez beat me to it... but yeah I was gonna ask if you're working on the Barcarolle

......triple trills? are there any pieces WITH triple trills (besides the Shrove-Tide Fair from Petrouchka)??

Anyway about the double trill thing... I had never tried it until I started working on Chopin's Barcarolle. Everyone always made a big deal about them, but for some reason I was able to do them the first time I tried idk... I love that Mendelssohn piece though one of my good friends just played it last year!

Yes – I’m still practicing the Barcarolle. Actually, I am practicing my pants off and it still has a long way to go. Those trills – Kendrick, you are one lucky man if you think they are easy - they’re not for me. And then I can barely reach all the chords (hopefully all this practicing is really stretching out my fingers by now). But then there is also the phrasing, which needs to be strictly adhered to or else things sound too choppy – the dynamics, I can’t play soft enough or loud enough and some parts have to be memorized in order to play and that’s not going well, either. There’s this one part somewhere around the third page from the end that I swear I have played through a thousand times and worked so hard trying to memorize it, but I can’t! Argh! I hate it!!! What was I thinking when I said I wanted to get this one down? But then….there is the rare occasion when a page or two actually goes fairly well, or I listen to Kissin or Zimerman play it. Oh, I love it!!! Not quite ready to give up, yet. Time will tell… Although I think after this one I’m not going to tackle a piece that is more than five pages.

Is that the section on the 3rd to last page where it's a lot like right before it returns to the beginning theme (except with a bunch of chords in the left hand)? If I communicate myself clearly (yeah right ) and we're thinking of the same place... I felt the SAME way about it. ugh!! Chopin's Barcarolle is BY FAR the hardest piece to memorize that I've ever played. But yes, I am extremely lucky in that I find those double trills fairly easy.

And the phrasing........ it took getting used to for me. I had never played a piece quite like this before

It is the 3rd to the last page – it’s mostly inverted chords or octaves, and it lasts around 10 measures. ( I’m guessing because I don’t have the score in front of me now.) What is even sadder, though, is that I’m actually having trouble memorizing just the very first two measures! I can’t believe it. I must be sick or something.




And I probably never will again – that is if I even get this one down.

lol yeah I felt the same way... now it's my absolute favourite piece to play! I LOVE it

how do you memorize? the way I did it was to memorize ONLY the left hand... 1 or maybe 2 measures at a time. once you can play that (alone) without the music, then just add in the right hand and listen. your ear should tell it where to go. then practice REALLY slowly, first making the left hand way louder than the right hand and then playing it with normal balance but exaggerating every little nuance and musical thing you're going to do. just do 1 or 2 measures a day or the next day you'll come back to it and it will all be gone, and you'll have to start all over again.

that's the way I finally did it, and it seemed to work better (that's how I'm in the process of memorizing Brahms 118/2 right now, and since I've already done the Barcarolle, this is going a LOT faster/easier)

I agree with you that it is best to concentrate on only 1 or 2 measures at a time. Trying to memorize a whole section lead me nowhere. And yes – in some places (like that section I talked about before) I’ve forced myself to work on only the LH since it is most of time just inverting chords. But sometimes it’s something else, and I just stare at my fingers for a long time and try to remember what keys they’re on. I’m also relying on just plain muscle memory. I like your idea about altering the balance/exaggerating things/slow practice, etc….

Funny – I had to play the Brahms 118/2 in a recital a couple years ago and had trouble memorizing it too. My teacher has a lot of great tips on memorizing – things like what you talked about. I thought I had the piece down but when it was my turn to play, at the last second I picked up my music and brought it to the piano with me. Big mistake! I had it memorized but then I doubted myself and thought I’d just look at the music every now and then. Trouble was I had not practiced like that, so as I was playing from memory and then looked up at the music, I couldn’t immediately find where I was so that made me hesitate. And that made me terribly nervous, which in turn made me not play as well as I could have. Oh well….another life experience. At least there are no double trills in the Brahms!