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THE GUITAR PLAYERS COMMUNITY

Trill Technique

Performing a trill is a fairly simple process in terms of technicality. Essentialy a hammer-on followed by a pull of, but repeated in quick succession. Trills add an interesting edge to a piece of music, and provide an oppertunity to punch the air or survey the croud in whilst holding a rock god like stance! This article has just been updated with audio examples.

Spinal Tap’s "Tonight I’m Gonna Rock You Tonight" provides a good example of a trill, performed after the intro riff to the song.

Trills are just two or more notes rapidly changing back and forth between them. I have seen these described in two ways. Firstly an upper trill, where you start with the lower note, and then hammer on to the upper note. Then the other is a lower trill, where you would start with the upper note and then pull off to the lower note. To be honest - there is no difference - it just depends on what note comes first - but the technique is identical. Just hammer the higher note, then pull it off to the lower note. Simple as that!

For instance take example 1 below, pick the F note on the 1st string then as fast as you can stay smooth hammer-on and pull-off between the Gb note and the F note. Now the same thing with the F note and G note (1st to 3rd fret) using index and middle finger this time. Move onto the F and Ab notes using the index and ring finger. Keep doing this up and down all strings as far as you can stretch each time with different fingers.

Example 1

Here is an audio clip of Example 1:

I play the first trill with my index and middle finger. I then play the second trill with my index and third (ring) finger. I then play the third trill (F to G#) with my index and ring finger, and then I also play it again with my index and little finger. The final trill I can only reach with my index and little finger. This takes some work to get a good hammer on and pull off, and also to build up any speed takes practice. With most players, the little finger is slowest to develop, so these exercises help.

 The next exercise trills between 3 different notes. In ex.2 trill the notes C# and D for a beat, then quickly jump to trilling the C# and E notes. Repeat then pattern as many times as you see fit.

Example 2

Here is an audio clip of Example 2:

I play the D note trill with my middle finger, and then alternate onto the E note trill with my little finger. This again can be hard to play cleanly and with speed, but practice.

The last exercise is trilling with open strings. The first step is to pick the C# note and pull off to the open B string (trilling those 2 notes). Next move to fret 3 the D note and use that note and the open B string. Continue this up and down all strings to hear the different sounds and intervals.

Example 3

Here is an audio clip of Example 3:

Here I play the example with just my middle finder because I can get the most control and power from it, but practice the lick, and see what works best for you.

The trill isn’t the most common of embellishments for a note, but it can add a little variation to your solos, or like with the Spinal Tap track - a simple introduction for a lead phrase. If you want to play the trill for the Tap’s song - it’’s as follows:

A couple of tips to help you out. If you find that the notes starts to die away - mainly when you first start out, this is because you may not have the power in your fingers - but add some distortion to help the notes ring out. Secondly, if you find that you get a lot of excess noise, especially with the open string trills, try resting just the edge of your palm just where the strings enter the bridge. Don’t palm mute, as this will just kill the sound but just the slightest dampening will help you out.

Good luck!