Home  Singing Speeding Up Your Trills
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Speeding Up Your Trills |
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Q: I'm working on my R&B/Gospel styling, but my trills are
slow and sloppy. Is there any thing I can do to speed up my
trills?
A: The first thing we need to do is understand what trills are
(also called licks, runs and turns). A trill is a scale sung
dynamically with crisp delineation, fast vibrato and a clean attack or
onset. In other words, going from one note to another without
slurring or sliding, because slurring notes together gives the
impression of poor vocal control. On the other hand, you
don't want to add an 'H' sound, a staccato or glottal stroke (clucking
noise) to your vocal line to achieve separation between notes.
This will create an artificial and artistically unpleasant sound.
So how is note delineation organically achieved? First, start on
an F below middle C for the men or F above middle C for the
women. Now sing up to a G and then back down. Learn to go
back and forth as rapidly as possible without sliding or losing note
distinction until you feel a 'bounce' between notes. Use a
metronome and start at sixty beats per minute and speed up one or two
bpm at a time while singing eighth notes. Speed up only as fast
as you can while remaining clean in your note delineation. If you
can get to 200 bpm, then you're up to speed with Mariah Carey and Brian
McKnight. Now you just have to learn to put together longer
patterns of notes within the scales used for the style you are singing
in. These scales are cataloged in the Singing Success
Program. It's important to understand that learning is
incremental with this. If you only speed up one beat a day, which
is so gradual that it can hardly be felt, then in less than four
months, you can be at 200 bpm.
- by Brett Manning
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