This week’s Kopprasch installment is a real lip trill workout. As with the previous etude (No. 44), this one is numbered differently in the Gumpert edition, where it is labeled No. 44. While this study isn’t recommended for developing lip trills, it is a great one for refining your technique. My edition recommends a tempo of quarter note=84-116, although quarter=100 worked the best for me.   There are also a couple of interesting discrepancies between the two editions (Cornopub and Gumpert/Frehse/Carl Fischer).  One difference is the notation of the ends of trills (nachschlag), as shown below. The top example is from mm. 16 in the Cornopub edition, and the bottom is from the same measure in the Gumpert edition.

This may not seem like much of a difference, but to me it seemed easier and less awkward to execute the top example. I’m not entirely sure about the origins of this discrepancy, although I would assume that the Cornopub edition is based on an original manuscript or facsimile. The old Breitkopf and Härtel Edition on IMSLP uses the notation shown in the lower example, as do the rest of the editions there. Whichever edition you use, be aware of which trills you can begin in a more relaxed manner (half notes), and which ones need to begin more or less immediately (quarter notes and shorter). The shorter lip trills can be helped along with a burst of air speed, combined with tongue and lip coordination. The a-sharp to b-natural valve trill in mm. 65 works well fingered 23-3.

On the audio/video side of things, I am still experimenting with Adobe Premiere as my editing software. As this is an older version (CS2), the Adobe Media Encoder does not have the H.264 (MPEG-4) option, so I am trying various other formats to see which one works the best. Are there any Premiere CS2 users out there who could recommend a setting for YouTube videos?