Trombone lesson: Lip trills
This is how to master lip trills on your trombone and how to practice them.
Admittedly, this flexibility exercise is not the most fun you can have with a trombone, but there’s no way around the fact that there’s a lot of hard work involved if you want to be a top performer on a brass instrument. Footballers don’t just kick a ball around all the time at practice…
With that in place: Let’s do something about your lip trills. Regardless of the genres you play, they will be needed at some point. Or you can use your soon-to-be-improved trill skills to show off in the trombone locker room.
There is only one way to make it work, and that is to start slow. Find a metronome, and set a slow tempo that allows you to play the whole rhythmical pattern without stumbling. I recommend that you write down the tempo you can play it in today, and try to raise it by a few beats per minute every day over a period of time. The goal is to get to the point where you don’t notice the individual notes, they just flow. Think of it as running, you don’t want to think about every step you take, but rather just the direction and the speed and the flow.
If the last few intervals are too high, just skip them. Start the exercise on 1st position and work your way out to 7th, repeating the whole pattern on every position. And tomorrow you start at 7th and go up to 1st position. Deal?
There is not much more to be said about this exercise. Scroll down for the sheet music and go for it!
Get access to an extended version of this exercise plus tons of other trombone flexibility exercises in the member’s section. How much can you improve your playing during a 14-day free trial?
[nggallery id=23]
