Hi there, it’s my first posting on this forum.
So, I’m having a hard time learning trills and I realized that there is very little advice on the subject online.
I have a lot of trouble controlling my speed, and balancing the two notes of the trill.
Do you have any tips on this ? How exactly should I practice ?
My only tip is lubricant. I use Dermeze so i can easily move the harp backwards and forwards with no gripping or friction.
Hello @mauraulucien welcome!
So I can give a couple tips that might help too.
@toogdog - the advice on lubricant is solid! For me, a lot of the time I wet my lips and make sure to “warm up” the harp I’m playing.
Progressiong Training - starting super slow and practicing sliding between the two notes is a good place to start. You want to make sure you are hitting both cleanly. Then of course raise that speed slowly.
Technique - I prefer the head trill. It lets me hit the notes cleaner, control speed, and is more stable all around. The musician Jason Ricci has a great video on youtube reviewing the technique and showing a good example of different styles of trilling, especially the head trill.
I hope some of that is helpful!
Cheers!
Thank you both for the tips ! I’m not sure that the lubricant is going to do the trick for me because my real problem is balancing the two notes but I’m going to try it anyway. I’m also going to check the video thank you !
@mauraulucien - the fact that you’re noticing the imbalance is GOOD - your ears are OPEN. Bravo!
@HappyHarpist’s advice to SLOOOWWWW IT WAAAYYYYY DOWN is spot on. Anytime you’re wanting to improve at anything SLOW IT DOWN!!!
Can you play it balanced really slow? Play it at THAT speed for a couple minutes. Then try a little bit faster. Still balanced? Great! Not balanced? Slow it back down to where it sounds balanced and practice it at that speed for a couple minutes again.
Do this every day, and in a few weeks you’ll be shocked at what it does for ya.
Other things to play with:
@HappyHarpist mentioned he and Jason Ricci like the head shake. I don’t. (It gives me a headache, lol.) But TRY it all:
ALSO, While you’re slowly trilling, play with your tongue position. Try slowly moving the back of your tongue up toward the “Kk” zone, try lowering it like when you yawn, try different vowel shapes.
Keep relaxed, patient, and have fun playing and exploring this.
You’re on the path my friend. Keep up the good work! Rock on! 
To add to Luke’s answer…. I am just getting my trills down so I’m not speaking from great experience. That said here is what worked for me as mentioned above…
3 is what I wanted to touch base on and add to - when slowing down, do it with rhythmic accountability still
For example if the track you’re using or metronome is at for example 90 bpm. Start with half notes in time them speed up to 1/4 note then 8th, 16th etc…
I was winging it in the beginning without rhythmic accountability and it made it difficult to transition out of the trill into the next phrase. Once I practiced with rhythmic accountability transitions became easier.
Hope that 2 cents helps
Mike
If it helps anyone, I’m also struggling with trills a lot. My two notes are also imbalanced, I can’t keep a tempo, my trill is still very slow, etc.
What I have been doing almost daily now for maybe two months, is working with a metronome. I start at 120bpm and try to reach each note on each beat. I repeat 2~3 times and then I increase the speed by 30bpm, until it becomes garbage.
Recently I have switched to instead of simply repeating a -45 trill, do what Luke’s have us practice in one of the Blues Train lesson: linking -34 45 -45 45 trills. I find this way harder so hopefully this will help in the future. The other advantage is that as you do a draw trill followed by a blow trill, draw trill then blow trill, you don’t have to stop. So I do 1 set of that and then increase the speed on the metronome if I can make that set approximately correctly.
Working with the metronome helps me working the trill on beat and keep a constant pace and starting at low speed helps to slowly build-up my technique. But improvements have been slow I have to say.
I never do the head shake thing as I have had a neck injury for years. I prefer to let the harp do the work. The way I do anything is start off very slowly and build up the speed it works for a vast amount of techniques. I think that’s the best approach I hope this helps