It's interesting -- this is actually how you learn a trill on any instrument. Start with whole notes, cut them in half successively, and do it over and over again for a few minutes every day.
This is how I was taught how to trill when I was 8. Now thanks to all my fantastically amazing teachers, I’ve managed to get into a wonderful arts school!!
Interestingly I would always teach it from the top note down and it is like an elastic band that is taut and then relaxes. I love her 'controlling the loss of control idea' -Joyce is absolutely right, you have to stat slow and then speed up but there is a moment where you have to let go - but keep thinking of the upper note always and it is probably the only singing that you actually feel in the throat!
Interesting remark about Marilyn Horne. However, Horne herself said in a video interview that she took two alternating notes at slow speed, and eventually speeded them up. The same exercise Joyce demonstrated here.
rayangreene I doubt that Horne was being mean-spirited....sometimes divas revise their own stories! Here’s the interview at 11:00, Horne, Pavarotti, and Sutherland discuss trills. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-KxqwVHw2oYM.html
@@wotan10950Thanks for the link :). I didn't say Ms Horne was being mean-spirited, but the circumstances of her "revision" sound a bit odd : when another talented younger professional states that she needs to work on her trills, she responds that she never had to practise as they "come naturally". As if she was trying to score some points or present herself as "more talented".
@@rayangreene Having personal experience with Ms. Horne....no...she's not pretentious or bitter. She loves working with young singers. In fact, I wouldn't be a singer if it wasn't for her. Joyce sang at Ms. Horne's 75 birthday recital.....I was there.
I have a baritone voice and I’m teaching myself to trill in head voice AND chest. If I can make my big voice move, you can definitely make your smaller, more flexible, female voice move!!!
@@Michael-hz2pl have you had much success with your trill? Fellow baritone here, still haven't been able to master it yet though not for lack of trying! 😅
+Ani Vardanyan I feel it more on my soft palate as well. Don't worry! I also don't always feel resonance very much in my sinuses (unless I'm sick). Various sensations feel different for everyone because no one body or voice is exactly the same.
Why do I think it's similar to what I did as a child (to mimick a vibrato) that started with a goat-like sound. I don't know if what i'm doing is the same (it's actually quite rapid)
I don't get it... If I slow down the video she goes back and forth between two pitch, but when she actually trills the notes are different. Pls someone tell me, if I go back and forth between a c and an d (1 full tone apart), am I supposed to trill between those two notes, or do a one semitone trill? This is so confusing to me... :')
I thought (with García or Vaccaj) that the trill was something the singer just has or not; that it couldn't be taught. Well, at the end of the day, it is not such an important thing. In fact, there has always been prima donnas (the great Giulia Grisi in the XIXth century or the big Montserrat Caballé in the XXth, among others) that didn't have one and they led splendid careers, nonetheless.
Well, about the relevance of having a trill, I'd say it depends on the repertoire. I've always thought it was a shame for some baroque singers not to have one. I know for a fact that you can work on your trill as Joyce says. I agree with you though : a good trill or the lack thereof doesn't make a career, but it can allow such beautiful ornamentations, which definitely enhance a performance.
I do miss the trill in many of Caballé's interpretations (depending on the role, I miss it a lot), so I'd say it's not that the trill is not relevant, but that Caballé was so amazing in other aspects that people forgave her lack of a trill.
+robert111k Yes in other repertoires as rayanreene says it isn't needed. But in Baroque its would be a shame not to have it. Baroque music is distinctive in that the instrument it uses, the rapid uses of it and the ability of the vocalist. To ignore trills is to ignore the baroque style, as not only the vocalist has trills but is also in the instrument sections as well. Bottomline is that taking trills away from baroque is not doing it in the spirit of how baroque music is.
+robert111k Oh no. I didn't start off with a trill, and using Ms. DiDonato's exercise I had a trill in 5 weeks. Now I'm just working at sustaining it. So no, it isn't just a "you have it or you don't" - it can be learned.
I feel like I am doing it but I can't really tell... I guess if I say how it actually feels when I do it, you all might understand. It feels like a pulsating laugh, except faster than usual. Yeah can someone tell me what it's supposed to feel like. Ty Lol.
I'm very late to this and you certainly have a trill now but for anybodu wondering it does feel a little bit like a pulsating laugh. Making a pulsating laugh is what helped me doing trills instead of accelerating an interval like shown in this video. But it should not be completely like a pulsating laugh, it rather feels like the voice sort of cracks but not really. It is hard to explain well
You must correct me if I am wrong. 1. The vocal range of the candidate is defined by all the pitches where both, escaping air and no escaping air are available. 2. If the higher note is yearned at to be a falsetto, the trill mechanism is actuated?
@@sananton2821 quite a bit, actually. I have preferences for things they did then, and preferences for things they do now. I think sound expectations have shifted from the golden age, but decrying all modern singing as inherently inferior isn’t doing anything good for the art form. I know a handful of singers that do sound much more like those singers in the first half of the 20th century, but I wouldn’t go so far as to say that they’re just right out “better” than others.
