Week 2 Assignment

Adena nice work! I think there are two things you can try and apply here.

1. I know you suggested trying the 3 trills per note last week. The one issue with this is that it can be hard in your stage of learning to break a note that is typically divided into division of 2 into divisions of 3. In counting and feeling the half/quarter note durations, we would tend to think of dividing them into eighth notes. To use that baseline to help us, it might make more sense to do a division of 2 (doing either 2 trills or 4 trills). I know there are some technical hurdles to conquer but I think auditory clarity helps our technique automatically.

2. The biggest technical thing in your way is that, once your fingers are in place on the keys for a given trill, they are not moving from their spots at all as they trill. Imagine you are my 1.5 year old toddler for a minute. If he wants to move forward, if he keeps his feet in exactly the same place, he will do a march and be kind of off balance and stuck (which he does frequently). If he takes tiny steps forward, he will stay balanced and move forward incrementally. Similar in trills, even if we are on the same note trilling, we can take tiny tiny steps in and out to stay balanced and make sure we aren't feeling like we are hyper engaging our fingers. Think of staying at the key but moving very subtly toward the fallboard and then away from the fallboard.  

Dr. Leann Osterkamp He Right, like your toddler. I got it! I’ll revise the division and the in and out motion. I am also learning an incredible amount from your replies to everyone's exercises. Thank you!

Dora Burak Nice work! The one big thing that we need to modify is that we don't want to every curl any fingers or try to get fingers "out of the way." The rest of your hand that is not playing should look as though your hand is just casually resting on the keys. Your fingers may actually be touching the keys but, because your weight is centered correctly on the trilled notes, they will not create sound. When we curl, we are causing tension and throwing off the weight distribution. Disclaimer: keeping the rest of your hand fully relaxed and loose while doing this exercise is VERY hard :) but you can do it! 

Andrea LeVan nice work! I will try and break this into the three separate trills.

1. on the first trill, notice that you kind of stay in exactly the same place on the keys that you start in. With prolonged trills, we are going to want to have some in and outward motion to allow for balance and freedom from tension. When we stick in one place, there is a higher tendency to play too much with our fingers, which gets us feeling "stuck" when we try and go faster. usually, if speed is struggling, the culprit is playing too much with our fingers. You can see that your trill stays close to the key (a good thing) BUT you can see your thumb progressively starting to come off the key and trying to play independently as the trill progresses. 

2. Notice that by the time you get to the second trill, you are playing very much with your fingers, which is creating what I call the airplane effect, where your thumb and your pinky are elevated to try and isolate and "balance" the inner fingers. What we actually want if for the outer fingers to be fully at rest on the keys and the weight on the inside of your hand is what allows your to oscillate between notes, instead of having to try to do it with your fingers. Again, when we try to go fast with finger-originated trills, they max out quickly and are sloppy and unclear. 

3. Notice that when you temporarily it the lower note of the third trill, there is a moment where the trill kind of "frees" up and looks easier. It is because you moved in and out! That's what you need in part on the first two trills. The airplane continued a bit here, as well. 

So a combo of moving in and out and trying to keep the non-trilling portion of your hand completely at rest which you balance on the trill.