Singing Trills

Lip and tongue trills are very common in vocal warm ups. A trill is a musical ornament consisting of rapid alternation between two adjacent notes. These notes are usually a semitone or tone apart. Early in the trills history they Italian term was “gruppo” which means a group or cluster. They have become more and more popular for loosening up the or facial muscles and getting the vibration established in the mouth and lips. If you were to ask teachers and theatre coaches they would tell you that these exercises are easy on the vocal folds but gets the respiratory system going full steam.

There are two sources of vibration in a trill. One is in the larynx and one in the front of the mouth feeding from the same airstream. This concept of sharing from the same energy source is important because if the lip trill absorbs too much energy the vocal folds can’t vibrate. Then on the other hand if the vocal folds get too much the lip won’t be able to vibrate. It is like a yang and yang situation. The aerodynamic power available for this dual vibration is the lung pressure multiplied by the mean airflow produced. The main airflow is same at the glottis as the lips otherwise our cheeks or neck would bulge out and look weird. The only difference is the amount of pressure dropped across each of them.

If the lung pressure is constant then more pressure across one means that there is less across the other. Physical law dictates that the pressure across the lips plus that across the vocal folds must equal the lung pressure. The singer will learn how to adequately budget the pressures appropriately to keep both the lips and vocal folds vibrating. At warm-up the exploration will involved learning what the minimum pressure is for the lips especially when the pitch is raised. If we go back to the 17th and 18th centuries the trill was easily the most important exercise for cadenzas and melodies. No singer that wished to succeed could go without it. Those singers without a trill would be judged as imperfect. There were terms used for the trill in past centuries. The English word for the trill was the descriptive-“Shake”!

Here are some tips that can help you with your trills:

• Choose a sequence of notes and start with high to low
• Go through the sequence slowly, singing each note in slow vibrato. Sing a note per beat
• Increase the tempo until you reach the tempo you want
• Remember tempo is very important

You have to practise trilling regularly in falsetto which will loosen your vocal chords and improve your vocal quality. If you can’t jump between the notes fast enough then decrease the tempo and keep practising. Then you can slowly increase the tempo. It would benefit you to find a classically trained vocal teacher that can help you to master these difficult techniques. Just remember to never overdo it! You may start seeming strained as you sing a lot of words in trills. Improper singing can harm your vocal cords causing growths or nodules on the vocal cords. Remember to drink a lot of water when singing.