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How to Play a Trill

Two questions cause nearly all the trouble with trills: which note it starts on, and whether yours is actually even or merely fast. The first has an answer that depends on when the music was written. The second is almost impossible to judge in your own playing, because at speed your ear hears a blur and fills in the gaps.

Reviewed August 2026. Written for exam students, AMEB included; for the ornaments your own grade or edition requires, check your current syllabus and your score. Not affiliated with AMEB.

Measure a trill

What a trill actually is

A rapid alternation between the written note and the note above it. Not the note below, and not the same note repeated - a repeated note is a tremolo, which is a different ornament that people sometimes play by accident when a trill collapses.

The upper note is the next note in the key, which means the distance is not always the same. A trill on C in C major alternates C and D, a whole tone apart. A trill on E in the same key alternates E and F, a semitone apart. Same sign, same idea, and a noticeably different feel under the hand - which is why a trill that is comfortable on one degree can be awkward on another. If the composer wants something other than the key's own note above, the score says so with an accidental beside the trill sign.

Which note it starts on

This is the part most often got wrong, and the answer is historical rather than technical.

  • Baroque and Classical - the trill conventionally begins on the upper note. A trill written on C begins on D. This is the convention that surprises people, and playing a Bach or Mozart trill from the written note is the single most common ornament error in exams.
  • Romantic onward - it normally begins on the written note.

Convention, not law. Editions disagree, composers wrote exceptions, and a good edition's notes will tell you what its editor thinks. If your score has editorial guidance, it beats any general rule - including this one.

Evenness beats speed, every time

A slower, perfectly even trill sounds better than a fast lumpy one, and it is what an examiner notices. Speed is the thing students chase because it feels like the skill; evenness is the thing that makes it sound like an ornament rather than a scramble.

Three faults account for most trills that do not work:

  • Uneven spacing - the alternation is not regular, usually settling into an unintended long-short pattern.
  • Unbalanced weight - one of the two notes is consistently louder than the other, so instead of a shimmer you hear a repeating accent. This is very hard to catch by ear because both notes are yours.
  • Starting on the wrong note, which the era section above covers, and which no amount of practice fixes because it is not a technique problem.

Finding out which of those is yours

Play a trill on a MIDI keyboard and it gets picked out of what you played and reported back: which note you started on, the two notes involved, how many alternations you managed, how fast they were, how even the spacing was, and how balanced the two notes were in weight.

That last pair is the useful part. "Even" and "balanced" are exactly the two things a player cannot reliably judge about their own trill at speed, and they have different fixes: a spacing problem is usually the hand tightening, while a weight problem is usually one finger - very often the fourth - doing less work than its partner.

The starting note is worth checking even when you know the rule. Playing a Classical trill from the written note is a habit, and habits do not announce themselves.

A run is recognised as a trill once there are enough alternations close enough together - a handful of notes at genuine trill speed rather than two slow neighbouring notes. What is measured, and what it cannot see, is set out in how grading works.

Play one and look

Practising one

  1. Start absurdly slowly, as two separate notes, and make them exactly equal in length and weight. A trill is not a special technique; it is an even alternation played fast.
  2. In rhythmic groups. Four notes to a beat, then six, then eight - rather than "as fast as possible", which is how unevenness gets in.
  3. Watch the weaker finger. Between the third and fourth fingers, the fourth is usually the one dropping its weight.
  4. Keep the hand quiet. The movement is in the fingers. A trill driven from the wrist tightens within a couple of seconds and then it is over.
  5. Decide the ending before you start. Most trills land somewhere specific, and a trill that is still going when the next beat arrives is a rhythm problem rather than an ornament one.

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