How to play cross-string trills

yo so continuing off of last week's video on ornaments i thought i'd show you a kind of niche technique today we're looking at cross string trills a cross string trill is exactly what it sounds like it's a trill or some other ornament played across multiple strings rather than playing it on one string with hammer-ons and pull-offs why would you want to play cross-string trills for one when executed well they sound extremely crispy this is a technique that's often used by classical guitarists when they play baroque music baroque music tends to be texturally dense so when all your left hand fingers are occupied in some crazy polyphony your hammer runs and pull-offs can become less coordinated and they can sound wimpy and not project well a cross-string trill while it could be seen as an excuse to avoid addressing poor slur technique is often a great alternative to trying to play single string ornaments because they're generally less strenuous and they're easier to make project you want your trails to sound assertive not wimpy and pathetic now while they take a load off the left hand the right hand has to pick up the slack the left hand is responsible for fretting the two notes to be trilled on two adjacent strings for demonstration purposes we'll say it's e on the open first string and d sharp on the fourth fret of the second string now the right hand needs to alternate these notes in quick succession there are tons of fingering patterns you could use here but i'll go through a few common ones a universally popular one is m i a p or middle finger on e index on d sharp ring finger on e thumb on d sharp [Music] this is a good option because it rolls off the hand really smoothly having the thumb be the last finger is advantageous because it's a strong finger so it can place more emphasis on the last note which is the main target note we're aiming for and also if you're playing a bass note underneath this your thumb will play the bass note first then move its way up to the melody note to conclude the trill [Music] another combination that was popular with my former teacher is m-i-a-m i tried to adopt it but it just doesn't feel good to me you generally want something that will still work if you cycle it so you can play extended trills like here's m-i-a-p again just over and over messing around a little a-m-i-p feels really good i can really let that one fly another less precise way to do this is to double stroke the pair of strings with two fingers like here i'm pushing my index finger through both strings and then immediately doing the same with my middle finger this is good because it occupies fewer fingers and it sounds a little more aggressive and assertive the downside is it's less focused than plucking individual strings so you sacrifice some clarity now as a way of cheating at trills my last teacher showed me this thing he does that i think he calls fake trills it's a way of using these sorts of fingerings to emulate a trill but the actual notes used are technically incorrect if we're calling it a trill trills are typically between two adjacent scale tones not just any pair of notes but this method involves using other notes that don't adhere to this rule here's an example here's just the chord with the ornament here it is again super slow [Music] the harmony here is a b7 chord which resolves to e major the trill if we're being technical should be between g and f sharp right before the f sharp resolves to e now with all the other stuff i have to play around that it basically requires me to do a couple quick pull offs and a hammer on with my third and fourth fingers that's hard they're weak fingers they lack physical independence if i were to play a proper cross string trill i'd have to play f sharp on the seventh fret and it would require this big stretch i'd be kneecapping myself with this because now the rest of the texture is hard to get to i can't really grab the other notes of the b7 chord while i'm doing this so the fake trill is the solution here i play the g then the open b string the g again and pull that off to f sharp including the open b means i'm not exactly playing a trill but because it's a note that belongs to the overall chord i'm playing b7 i can get away with it it kind of disguises the fact that i'm not playing a proper trill and it sounds super crispy an average listener would be none the wiser [Music] now how are you going to do any of this if you're not a psycho like me playing with long nails and intricate right hand technique like what if you use a pick you're pretty much looking at a hybrid picking solution lower string with a pick higher string with your middle finger when you're playing with a pick you're usually not playing dense polyphonic textures so normal hammer-ons and pull-offs aren't necessarily a challenge but cross-string trills do possess a certain flair that might be good for creating some interesting contrast that's always a good thing they sound awesome and i think it's worth looking for ways to incorporate them in your playing that's all i've got for now thanks for watching and i will see you next week

Channel: Alex Rockwell

Views: 1,131

Keywords:

Id: rKCAWnhdB1c

Length: 5min 29sec (329 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 23 2021