Having participated in several threads on trills in the past, sometimes asking for help and sometimes giving it (the blind leading the blind.... ) I did something yesterday that made me wonder if anybody else ever does it too!

I was playing a Haydn sonata that I was very good at once and am in the process of resurrecting, but the damned trills aren't doing the business for me at all at the minute! My problem in one is in starting with clarity on the top note, but softly, and then crescendoing through it. Anyway, somebody came into the room to talk to me and I kept playing while listening to them (I'm so well-mannered ), and my trill worked - or sounded like it did - because I somehow mindlessly and automatically did something I've never done before, which is stick on the damper pedal halfway through it! Only for an instant, but it was enough to carry it through at that stage at which it might otherwise start to flounder, and I still thought it sounded okay when I did the same thing intentionally later on. Cheating? Absolutely! Any other thoughts on this? I wonder did my ears tell my body what to do to get what I was listening for, once my brain was disengaged?

Well done! But why is it cheating?
I read somewhere that a great musician finds the 'easiest' solution to a given problem, wheareas an ordinary joe will just find a solution. (Or something like that)

It wasn't that stinker called 'something something con Variazioni' on the Dip syllabus was it?
Sounds to me like The Inner Game of Music being proved in action. If it's some time since you played it then you have no doubt learned a trick or two in the meantime.

Mel

Always had problems with the trill in Griegs Notturno, i found that i could'nt keep the left hand rythm consistent while trilling with the right. The only way i could do it was to try and not think about it too much, it was like mentally disconnecting, and then it seemed to work. ...its that coordination thing...for me thats the main challenge.

I'm not sure whether I need to disconnect more or connect more .....I thought I had the measure of trills, but I suppose it's one of those things that we need to keep at!

So HAS anybody ever cheated with the pedal - when a trill is in isolation, as in, with no accompanying part that would become undesireably clustered by use of the pedal?