A wavering or vibrating sound made by quickly repeating a musical note, or to make this sound with your voice or an instrument.
From Italian 'trillo,' possibly from Old High German 'trittan' meaning to vibrate or shake. The term entered English musical vocabulary in the 1600s from Italian music theory.
Bird trills and musical trills are genuinely the same acoustic phenomenon—both involve rapid frequency modulation—which is why birds have been the unconscious music teachers for every human musician across cultures.
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