Hello all.
Can you fiddlers out there give a few suggestions how to get my rolls crisper. My ring finger seems to be very weak and i'm not getting the crispness I would like.
Any tips??
Thanks
yes but if I keep practcing my rolls the way I'm playing them now, wont I just be practicing bad rolls?
Are there any excercises I can do?
At the moment I am breaking the roll up and just playing the first note and grace note, then the first three notes and then the whole roll.
I'm sure someone will come along with slightly more descriptive advice than that above savage. I'm not a fiddler but constructing exercises containing lots of what you're struggling with, almost like mini tunes, is time well spent on any instrument.
try practicing them in rhythm down the scale (third finger, second finger, first finger, open string roll) over and over. Start slowly and hearing each of the five notes, then don't lose that crispiness as you speed it up. And don't let your brain believe that your ring finger is weak!
I suggest ;Practice the cut, as you would use it in tunes. then practice the tap or whatever you call it,as you would in the tune. then practice the roll as part of a scale say... so play the scale , in time ... doh rey me etc then the roll in the same time as the scale doh roll, rey roll, etc... now try to reintroduce that roll into the tune... of course you could , as I do, play these three techniques as part of your basic scale.
Just a suggestion. My own approach would be not to worry or even bother about rolls till you have the essentials mastered; the tune in basic format, unadorned. good intonation, good precise timing, swing , lift , drive. these are the essentials. Listen to other instruments such as the concertina, they demonstrate clearly that you dont need rolls to play good trad! I was chatting to John Kelly last year about rolls, he rarely uses them much himself... enough said.
Clean, crisp rolls on fiddle aren't about how strong or weak your finger is. It's more about quickness and precise timing.
Session savage, maybe this will help (maybe not, but it's better than the advice above to just not use rolls, since rolls are what you're after).
The cut part of the roll has three distinct elements. Since you mentioned ring finger, let's stick with that--doing a roll on the index finger, say.
First, do a back swing with the ring finger. This is like a golfer's back swing--you need to raise your ring finger up and away from the fingerboard, so that it's basically pointing up at the ceiling. The bigger your back swing, the more oomph you can come down with.
Now swing the ring finger quickly down to flick against the string. Do NOT actually press the string onto the finger board as you would to play a note. Just flick through the string, stopping it from vibrating for a micro-second. This takes no real force or tension--the more relaxed your finger is as it swings through the string, the better. In fact, if you're doing this properly, your finger tip will bounce off the string and finger board and continue on its arc.
Which brings us to the third and last element--the follow through. After flicking through the string, let your finger bounce and finish the arc of its swing. Fully relaxed, it should end up curling in toward your palm, or at least to the palm-side of the string you just cut.
Most of the crispness and pop of a good roll on fiddle comes from this cut. Back swing is critical.
You can also improve your crispness and pop by keeping the up and down motion of the index finger as fast and small as possible. You don't need to come off the string completely--just enough to let the string up from the finger board so the string stops sounding fully for a micro-second, then instantly back down for the note. It's just a nano hop.
Hope this helps.
Session savage, it's not for me to add to or modify Will's magnificent analysis of what needs to be done to be able to play rolls - it stands on its own, and we should all download it, print it and keep it in the fiddle case to be read, learned and inwardly digested every time we take the fiddle out!
However, there is this problem - we, here, don't know what your technique actually looks like. So it is possible that you may, without realising it, be doing something that is hindering your playing of rolls. After all, from your bio it looks like you haven't been playing the fiddle all that long - in learning terms it is still fairly early days for you, so rolls and cuts can't be expected to be easy at this stage. I'd recommend that you get an experienced teacher to look at your technique (relaxation, posture, hold etc) to check if anything is wrong and to show you what needs to be done to correct it - before you undertake Will's advice.
Lazyhound, we all got to hear session savage a few months back, and he sound like he had the hang of things just fine. (May have even been a video clip?) I was basing my input on that understanding.
Savage, for 2nd or 3rd finger rolls, are you placing the 1st or 2nd finger down together with the main finger? My new teacher noticed that I wasn't doing that, and it was definitely slowing me down, I had too many fingers flying in the air. I don't think this is a hard and fast technique, but it's one way of doing them, and it can help with speed and with being more precise with your execution of them.
These roll discussions are really amazing---they can go on for days because there are so many little details to evaluate.
With some people it's close to a left hand pizzicato. I'm pretty sure
the timing of the roll (how it fits into the rhythm of the tune)
and how the 5 notes are grouped and their length in comparison
with each other all factor in. The finger movements can be quite
subtle in some cases and still sound "crisp" - at least in my experiments.
In a "long" roll if notes #2-5 are super close together - in rhythm - and
notes 1 and 5 are held as long as possible - in rhythm, that sounds pretty
crunchy even without the flicking and back swing - which might
screw up your tendons.
Hup, I've been doing the flicking and backswing for 30 years--finger tendons are fine. (And I'm prone to tendonitis.) It's not a tense or stressful motion--all extremely relaxed.
Good cuts and rolls are finessed, not gymnastic.
Kennedy makes a good point about rolls on the 2nd and 3rd fingers. Keep the finger below down the entire time--one less motion.
In the recent past I 've tried rolls more or less the way Will described it, and finally went back to more economy of movement and more vertical action. The other movement made it impossible for me to keep up at higher session speeds.
'.....you need to raise your ring finger up and away from the fingerboard, so that it's basically pointing up at the ceiling'.
Will, do you mean by that that it is the *fingertip* that is pointing up? Is it easy to cope with higher tempos if you have to come from such a long way?
I'm not convinced that the roll gets crispier the bigger the swing is. It's not the distance, but the explosiveness that counts.
As an 'older' player and pianist, I am going to go where Will CPT is going.
(assuming you did not have a stroke or TIA which caused the change in your finger response to the 'little grey cells'-I told you I was an older player....we worry about those things) google tendon gliding and I think Medial tendon exercises. I think I have the technical terms correct enough that it should pop up on a google seach. It is aprt of the broader category of things involved with carpal tunnel.
They have some physical therapy things for getting the finger independence back. For piano players, third fourth and pinky finger independence is always a problem, for me particularly on my left hand. If I trip over a website on this I will also post it later.
The last one are the two exercises I used when I was having trouble with fourth and pinky finger trills on the piano and getting the middle and ring fingers independent when I took up the box.
Thanks for those links, zippy. I’m also an older player (I remember when God’s dog was a puppy) and my rolls have gone to shirt. Nearly a year ago, I strained some tendons and apparently insulted the median nerve and now the third and fourth fingers just don’t do what they’re told – at least not fast enough. So I’ll be checking out those exercises.
Henk, that's interesting--I've never worried about the backswing and follow through slowing me down (or preventing me from keeping up with the pace). Never been an issue. It's an extremely quick, efficient motion. Even on short rolls (filling just a quarter note's worth of time), I still use a full backswing and follow through. It's just how I was taught (by Kevin Burke) and how I've done them all these years since. Makes for very crisp rolls that really pop.
For the more open, notey rolls (they type favored by fiddlers such as Seamus Connolly and Brian Conway), you don't need so much backswing and follow through because you're actually holding the notes (briefly) of the cut and release. Far less pop--these rolls sound more like the "dah-blah-blah" rolls of many flute players.
Relaxation is the key--you can move faster than you imagine as long as there's no tension in your fingers, hand, and forearm.
From time to time, I actually pitch in on doing construction...try not to make a regular diet of that any more.....Carpentry and tile are the worst for the tendons.
Even though I switched to pneumatic nailers and power drives, even long times using the trigger fecks up the thumb for some reason (not a big problem since I play box, but still uncomfortable). Worse is using a hammer. Late last year, I did alot of finish work and my third and fourth fingers tingled constantly and rolls were impossible.
The exercises helped alot.
In my case, I am old enough to remember when Jesus was an apprentice carpenter on one of my crews.
Will, thanks very much, that description helps alot. I was getting lessons from Martin Murray who is a brilliant teacher but unfortunately I have had to temporarily stop taking lessons.
I think I have just developed as a fiddle player enough to fully understand that I'm really not that good I can hear all my msitakes. The plus side to this is I now know exactly where I need to concentrate.... still, ignorance was bliss ;)
Your very welcome--glad for the chance to be of some use.
Beginning to know what you don't know is a huge step. Awareness. It means you understand the music and the fiddle well enough to now know how to apply whatever you learn from here on out. Enjoy!
I find your comment a bot contradictory. "I'm really not that good" "I can hear all my mistakes" Several professional musicians I work with say that you have just gotten past an important milestone. Being able to hear the mistakes you are making means you can recognize the things that you need to correct.
As my teachers says..."I (my teacher obviously) want you at the point where you hear my advice when I am not there" Basically, he wants a pupil to recognize/understand a problem and have recieved enough coaching to correct it properly.
But I have found that self teaching really has its limitations. If there is an economic/physical reason for quitting your tutor, look for a way, maybe less frequent lesson intervals or something like that, to see your teacher.
I have an attorney freind who says "A lawyer who accepts himself as a client, is a lawyer you don't want to work with." Same goes for DIY music lessons.
rolls are gone to sh!t
rolls are gone to sh!t
Hello all.
Can you fiddlers out there give a few suggestions how to get my rolls crisper. My ring finger seems to be very weak and i'm not getting the crispness I would like.
Any tips??
Thanks
# Posted on February 17th 2009 by session savage
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
practice
# Posted on February 17th 2009 by folkmasterflex
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
yes but if I keep practcing my rolls the way I'm playing them now, wont I just be practicing bad rolls?
Are there any excercises I can do?
At the moment I am breaking the roll up and just playing the first note and grace note, then the first three notes and then the whole roll.
# Posted on February 17th 2009 by session savage
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
I'm sure someone will come along with slightly more descriptive advice than that above savage. I'm not a fiddler but constructing exercises containing lots of what you're struggling with, almost like mini tunes, is time well spent on any instrument.
# Posted on February 17th 2009 by bogman
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
And I'll congratulate myself on not taking advantage of all the obvious baker, chinese and ring finger jokes that presented themselves with your post
# Posted on February 17th 2009 by bogman
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
try practicing them in rhythm down the scale (third finger, second finger, first finger, open string roll) over and over. Start slowly and hearing each of the five notes, then don't lose that crispiness as you speed it up. And don't let your brain believe that your ring finger is weak!
# Posted on February 17th 2009 by airport
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
I suggest ;Practice the cut, as you would use it in tunes. then practice the tap or whatever you call it,as you would in the tune. then practice the roll as part of a scale say... so play the scale , in time ... doh rey me etc then the roll in the same time as the scale doh roll, rey roll, etc... now try to reintroduce that roll into the tune... of course you could , as I do, play these three techniques as part of your basic scale.
Just a suggestion. My own approach would be not to worry or even bother about rolls till you have the essentials mastered; the tune in basic format, unadorned. good intonation, good precise timing, swing , lift , drive. these are the essentials. Listen to other instruments such as the concertina, they demonstrate clearly that you dont need rolls to play good trad! I was chatting to John Kelly last year about rolls, he rarely uses them much himself... enough said.
# Posted on February 17th 2009 by the wicked hacker
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Clean, crisp rolls on fiddle aren't about how strong or weak your finger is. It's more about quickness and precise timing.
Session savage, maybe this will help (maybe not, but it's better than the advice above to just not use rolls, since rolls are what you're after).
The cut part of the roll has three distinct elements. Since you mentioned ring finger, let's stick with that--doing a roll on the index finger, say.
First, do a back swing with the ring finger. This is like a golfer's back swing--you need to raise your ring finger up and away from the fingerboard, so that it's basically pointing up at the ceiling. The bigger your back swing, the more oomph you can come down with.
Now swing the ring finger quickly down to flick against the string. Do NOT actually press the string onto the finger board as you would to play a note. Just flick through the string, stopping it from vibrating for a micro-second. This takes no real force or tension--the more relaxed your finger is as it swings through the string, the better. In fact, if you're doing this properly, your finger tip will bounce off the string and finger board and continue on its arc.
Which brings us to the third and last element--the follow through. After flicking through the string, let your finger bounce and finish the arc of its swing. Fully relaxed, it should end up curling in toward your palm, or at least to the palm-side of the string you just cut.
Most of the crispness and pop of a good roll on fiddle comes from this cut. Back swing is critical.
You can also improve your crispness and pop by keeping the up and down motion of the index finger as fast and small as possible. You don't need to come off the string completely--just enough to let the string up from the finger board so the string stops sounding fully for a micro-second, then instantly back down for the note. It's just a nano hop.
Hope this helps.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Miss Lonelyhearts
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Wow, I never thought anyone had put that much thought into it Will! 8-P
I'll have to try this. Thanks for bringing this up session savage.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Fanning
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
"The people are without rolls, Your Majesty."
"Well, then, let them play doughnuts!"
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by nicholas
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Ha! Ha!
Mort au roi! Vive la république!
C'était de la brioche que l'autrichienne proposait, nicholas.
Et avec un prénom comme ça, je ne ferais pas le malin devant les français
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Fanning
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Session savage, it's not for me to add to or modify Will's magnificent analysis of what needs to be done to be able to play rolls - it stands on its own, and we should all download it, print it and keep it in the fiddle case to be read, learned and inwardly digested every time we take the fiddle out!
However, there is this problem - we, here, don't know what your technique actually looks like. So it is possible that you may, without realising it, be doing something that is hindering your playing of rolls. After all, from your bio it looks like you haven't been playing the fiddle all that long - in learning terms it is still fairly early days for you, so rolls and cuts can't be expected to be easy at this stage. I'd recommend that you get an experienced teacher to look at your technique (relaxation, posture, hold etc) to check if anything is wrong and to show you what needs to be done to correct it - before you undertake Will's advice.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by lazyhound
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Lazyhound, we all got to hear session savage a few months back, and he sound like he had the hang of things just fine. (May have even been a video clip?) I was basing my input on that understanding.
Sure, find a good teacher.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Miss Lonelyhearts
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Savage, for 2nd or 3rd finger rolls, are you placing the 1st or 2nd finger down together with the main finger? My new teacher noticed that I wasn't doing that, and it was definitely slowing me down, I had too many fingers flying in the air. I don't think this is a hard and fast technique, but it's one way of doing them, and it can help with speed and with being more precise with your execution of them.
These roll discussions are really amazing---they can go on for days because there are so many little details to evaluate.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by kennedy
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
With some people it's close to a left hand pizzicato. I'm pretty sure
the timing of the roll (how it fits into the rhythm of the tune)
and how the 5 notes are grouped and their length in comparison
with each other all factor in. The finger movements can be quite
subtle in some cases and still sound "crisp" - at least in my experiments.
In a "long" roll if notes #2-5 are super close together - in rhythm - and
notes 1 and 5 are held as long as possible - in rhythm, that sounds pretty
crunchy even without the flicking and back swing - which might
screw up your tendons.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Hup
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Hup, I've been doing the flicking and backswing for 30 years--finger tendons are fine. (And I'm prone to tendonitis.) It's not a tense or stressful motion--all extremely relaxed.
Good cuts and rolls are finessed, not gymnastic.
Kennedy makes a good point about rolls on the 2nd and 3rd fingers. Keep the finger below down the entire time--one less motion.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Miss Lonelyhearts
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
In the recent past I 've tried rolls more or less the way Will described it, and finally went back to more economy of movement and more vertical action. The other movement made it impossible for me to keep up at higher session speeds.
'.....you need to raise your ring finger up and away from the fingerboard, so that it's basically pointing up at the ceiling'.
Will, do you mean by that that it is the *fingertip* that is pointing up? Is it easy to cope with higher tempos if you have to come from such a long way?
I'm not convinced that the roll gets crispier the bigger the swing is. It's not the distance, but the explosiveness that counts.
Just my experience, no attack.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Henk Bos
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
As an 'older' player and pianist, I am going to go where Will CPT is going.
(assuming you did not have a stroke or TIA which caused the change in your finger response to the 'little grey cells'-I told you I was an older player....we worry about those things) google tendon gliding and I think Medial tendon exercises. I think I have the technical terms correct enough that it should pop up on a google seach. It is aprt of the broader category of things involved with carpal tunnel.
They have some physical therapy things for getting the finger independence back. For piano players, third fourth and pinky finger independence is always a problem, for me particularly on my left hand. If I trip over a website on this I will also post it later.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by zippydw
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
OK. Here are three sites
The last one are the two exercises I used when I was having trouble with fourth and pinky finger trills on the piano and getting the middle and ring fingers independent when I took up the box.
http://www.handhealthresources.com/Solutions%20Pages/Exercises.htm
http://www.carpal-tunnel-symptoms.com/tendon-glide-exercises.html
http://www.aitcnh.com/downloads/Carpal_Tunnel_Exercises_that_Work.pdf
The only thing. If you have recently banged up your elbow, that could also be causing it and you should see a Doc.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by zippydw
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Thanks for those links, zippy. I’m also an older player (I remember when God’s dog was a puppy) and my rolls have gone to shirt. Nearly a year ago, I strained some tendons and apparently insulted the median nerve and now the third and fourth fingers just don’t do what they’re told – at least not fast enough. So I’ll be checking out those exercises.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Bob himself
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Henk, that's interesting--I've never worried about the backswing and follow through slowing me down (or preventing me from keeping up with the pace). Never been an issue. It's an extremely quick, efficient motion. Even on short rolls (filling just a quarter note's worth of time), I still use a full backswing and follow through. It's just how I was taught (by Kevin Burke) and how I've done them all these years since. Makes for very crisp rolls that really pop.
For the more open, notey rolls (they type favored by fiddlers such as Seamus Connolly and Brian Conway), you don't need so much backswing and follow through because you're actually holding the notes (briefly) of the cut and release. Far less pop--these rolls sound more like the "dah-blah-blah" rolls of many flute players.
Relaxation is the key--you can move faster than you imagine as long as there's no tension in your fingers, hand, and forearm.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by Miss Lonelyhearts
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
From time to time, I actually pitch in on doing construction...try not to make a regular diet of that any more.....Carpentry and tile are the worst for the tendons.
Even though I switched to pneumatic nailers and power drives, even long times using the trigger fecks up the thumb for some reason (not a big problem since I play box, but still uncomfortable). Worse is using a hammer. Late last year, I did alot of finish work and my third and fourth fingers tingled constantly and rolls were impossible.
The exercises helped alot.
In my case, I am old enough to remember when Jesus was an apprentice carpenter on one of my crews.
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by zippydw
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Will, thanks very much, that description helps alot. I was getting lessons from Martin Murray who is a brilliant teacher but unfortunately I have had to temporarily stop taking lessons.
I can hear all my msitakes. The plus side to this is I now know exactly where I need to concentrate.... still, ignorance was bliss ;)
I think I have just developed as a fiddle player enough to fully understand that I'm really not that good
# Posted on February 18th 2009 by session savage
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Your very welcome--glad for the chance to be of some use.
Beginning to know what you don't know is a huge step. Awareness. It means you understand the music and the fiddle well enough to now know how to apply whatever you learn from here on out. Enjoy!
# Posted on February 19th 2009 by Miss Lonelyhearts
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
Session savage.
I find your comment a bot contradictory. "I'm really not that good" "I can hear all my mistakes" Several professional musicians I work with say that you have just gotten past an important milestone. Being able to hear the mistakes you are making means you can recognize the things that you need to correct.
As my teachers says..."I (my teacher obviously) want you at the point where you hear my advice when I am not there" Basically, he wants a pupil to recognize/understand a problem and have recieved enough coaching to correct it properly.
But I have found that self teaching really has its limitations. If there is an economic/physical reason for quitting your tutor, look for a way, maybe less frequent lesson intervals or something like that, to see your teacher.
I have an attorney freind who says "A lawyer who accepts himself as a client, is a lawyer you don't want to work with." Same goes for DIY music lessons.
# Posted on February 19th 2009 by zippydw
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
"a bit"
# Posted on February 19th 2009 by zippydw
Re: rolls are gone to sh!t
I'd call James Kelly and arrange a video lesson. www.jameskellymusic.com
By the way... if you could hear all your mistakes, how would you know?
# Posted on February 25th 2009 by jwvansteenwyk