Welcome to LivingPianos.com. I’m Robert Estrin. You hear concert pianists playing trills that sound jewel-like, and you might wonder: how can you achieve this in your own playing? Today, I’m going to share three simple techniques that can make a big difference in how your trills sound and feel.
1. Use Rounded Fingers
One of the easiest ways to improve your trills is to play with rounded fingers. If you try to execute trills with flat fingers, you’ll quickly notice how difficult it becomes. That’s because flat fingers limit you to using only one joint. By rounding your fingers, you engage all the joints, which provides more control and flexibility. This one change alone can dramatically improve your trills.
2. Measure Your Trills
This tip is essential: measure your trills. Trills might sound like a flurry of random notes, but I guarantee you that the trills you admire are carefully measured. Knowing exactly how many notes you’re playing in a trill allows you to execute them cleanly and land on the correct ending note.
Take, for example, the famous C major Mozart Sonata, K. 545. At the end of the exposition—and again at the end of the movement—there’s a trill that must resolve cleanly. How is that accomplished? By counting out the notes in advance. The good news is you don’t need to play a lot of notes. You can even play 16th notes and still have a beautiful trill. The key is consistency and precision. Remember, trills are a form of expressive license. As long as you’re playing the correct notes, you have flexibility in how many you use. Just make sure it’s intentional and measured.
3. Choose the Right Fingers
The fingering you use for trills makes a huge difference. One common fingering is 3-2, which is strong and reliable. But if you want the strongest possible combination, try using fingers 3 and 1. That pairing provides excellent strength and control. Of course, depending on the passage, you might not always have the luxury of choosing your ideal fingering. Sometimes you’ll need to use 2-4, which is less optimal, and in some rare cases, 5-4, which is the most difficult trill fingering. Five and four are both weak fingers, and trilling with them takes a lot of practice. You might find yourself using 5-4 in contrapuntal music, like a Bach fugue, where other fingers are needed for notes in a lower voice. If possible, stick with 3-1 or 3-2. Some pianists even alternate between the two during longer trills. Try them out and see what works best for you.
Bonus Tip: Lighten Up
Here’s one last little tip: lighten up when playing trills. If you try to use arm weight, you’ll find it incredibly difficult to sustain a clean trill. Instead, feel as though you’re hovering lightly over the keys. Let your fingers do all the work, and you’ll find that your trills become more fluid and effortless.
Let me know how these tips work for you in the comments here at LivingPianos.com and on YouTube. Thanks so much for joining me, and to all you subscribers out there. Let’s keep the discussion alive!
4 thoughts on “3 Ways to Make Trills Easier on the Piano”
Very helpful advice, esp. on lightening up.
I’ve been back into piano for about a year now, still bringing back repertoire and adding some new stuff to challenge myself. Am finding that 4-5 trills (or fast 32nd notes) are alarmingly common — you’re holding a key with the RH thumb or 2 or even 3 — so it’s something I have to learn.
Specific examples are the Chopin D-flat maj. Op. 70 valse, The Burlesca from Bach’s A-minor Partita, and “March” from “The Love of Three Oranges” by Prokofiev, who it seems was a piano masochist (though I’ve never attempted anything by Liszt), which I’m taking on as a challenge almost as a joke because I know I don’t have the ability. It’s the technical challenges in music, and their solutions, that I find fascinating.
Liszt has nothing on Prokofiev when it comes to challenges at the piano!
2025.10.02
Dear Robert,
Thank you for the fine video on trills. There is another issue with trill playing that you did not cover, and that is which note the trill is started on. Perhaps I didn’t know it mattered until I started pipe organ lessons. In some organ music is is indicated, e.g., if you have a five-note trill whether you start with the upper note or the lower note. So, e.g. one way it is
fgfgf, and the other way it is gfgfg or for seven notes it is either fgfgfgf or gfgfgfg. I can’t remember for sure but it is also a matter of whether you are playing baroque music or modern music – with baroque, if I remember correctly you always begin the trill with the upper note, and with modern it can be either way – lower note or upper note first.
Sincerely,
Charlie in Albuquerque
Charlie in Albuquerque
Generally, trills start on the auxiliary (the upper notes). However, in keeping with the video subject, “3 Ways to Make Trills Easier on the Piano”, sometimes it’s easier to start the trill on the lower note when they are quick trills and the extra note is difficult to negotiate.