Lip trills and tongue trills

What they are

A lip trill is the motorboat sound: loose lips flapping while you sing through them. Singers also call it a lip roll or lip bubble. Scalita writes it Prr.

A tongue trill is a rolled R held on a note, as in the Spanish word perro. Scalita writes it Trr, because saying T puts the tip of your tongue where the trill happens.

How to do a lip trill

1. Close your lips loosely, as if to say B, with your teeth apart and your jaw slack.
2. Blow steady air until your lips flap. No voice yet.
3. Add a quiet note in the middle of your voice and slide it a little.
4. Once it keeps going, sing a pattern on it, starting with the five-note scale.

You should feel a buzz at your lips, not in your throat. Keep it quiet.

How to do a tongue trill

1. Say T, then leave your tongue tip loose near the ridge behind your upper front teeth.
2. Blow through that spot so the tip flutters: a long trrr.
3. Add a quiet note, with your jaw still.

The air makes the flutter, not your tongue.

Which comes first: Scalita's rule

English-language guides usually start with the lip trill. Scalita gives the two trills different jobs: in every routine, the first trill is the tongue trill and every trill after it is the lip trill.

The lip trill needs steady breath support, and Scalita uses it to release tension. The tongue trill can add tension, so if you feel tense, switch to the lip trill. Only Gentle / Recovery, the routine for a tired voice, uses the lip trill both times.

Scalita starts on the tongue trill. If your language has no rolled R and it feels hard, start on the lip trill.

Spanish speakers roll an R every day. Standard English, French and German have no rolled R, and neither do most Brazilian accents, so for many adults it's a new skill.

Why singers use trills

Teachers and speech therapists group trills with humming and straw singing as semi-occluded vocal tract exercises: the lips, the tongue or a straw partly block the air on its way out.

In 2006 the voice scientist Ingo Titze showed on a computer model how a partial closure at the lips raises the air pressure above the vocal folds, which can make the voice work more efficiently. A 2014 study of seven such exercises found the two trills alike, and unlike a hum or a straw: the flutter adds a second vibration.

Both studies looked at the exercise itself, not at months of practice. Teachers use trills to start the voice gently and to carry it between low and high notes without a bump: a reason they're popular, not a promise.

Try it now

Piano: Salamander Grand Piano V3 by Alexander Holm, licensed under CC BY 3.0. Retuned, shortened and compressed for this site.

When the trill won't keep going

• The lip trill keeps stopping, or only runs when you blow hard. Your lips are holding on. Let them go loose, wet them, and use gentle, steady air. If they still stop, press a fingertip into each cheek beside the corners of your mouth and lift a little, to take the weight off your lips.
• It dies on the high notes. Common at first. Stay where it keeps going, quietly. The top of the pattern isn't a target.
• You run out of air. Breathe between keys, while the piano plays the next chord.
• You can't roll an R. Start from the T and blow through it, tongue loose. The t in American “butter” is one tap of the tongue; a trill is that tap repeated by the air. Until it comes, use the lip trill.
• Your tongue, jaw or throat tightens. Switch to the lip trill. In Scalita that's its job.
• Tickles and spit are normal.
• Something hurts. Stop. Pain is never part of a warm-up. If it keeps coming back, see a voice teacher or a doctor.

Where Scalita uses it