Hello All-
I’ve searched the archives and am having difficulty finding anything on this topic. How do you all roll on F natural with a keyed flute? I am using short F key and basically doing two cuts by lifting L3 and R1. Also tried cutting on L3 and tapping with the key itself, but I’m sloppy with that one. Curious to know what other methods you’re all using, as I’m trying to apply this to Maids of Mitchelstown Reel. Thanks so much.
Your approach works pretty well – in my case I usually use the long F key and hold it down for the duration of the roll (you would hold down the short F for the duration of the roll in your case as well, I’m assuming, it’s too tricky otherwise), and while I’m holding it down I lift the left-hand ring finger for the cut and use the right hand ring finger for the tap. With the F key open that right-hand tap is a weak chromatic note, but if you pulse it properly it comes out sounding pretty much like a roll.
I do short f rolls this way in the first part of the Ewe Reel, which includes some pedal notes on F so I just keep the long F key down through the whole passage.
Starting from F with an F key open, I’d cut R1 and then let the key shut and tap it open again - probably using the long F for preference. I disagree with Brad that this is too awkward. If your keys are properly set up with well adjusted spring weighting, with a bit of practice it works quite well - maybe less crisp than a standard roll on open tone-holes, but perfectly acceptable. Your short cran with L3 and R1 works fine too, but the roll is perfectly do-able, no need to fudge it with a R3 barely discernible tap.
I don’t really “have” Maids of Mitchellstown, but if trying to play it (just checked out the dots) I don’t usually roll that dotted crotchet F in the B music anyway, but hold it/push on it, which I think is what the Bothy Band/MM did??? I do some of the time semi-roll the 2nd 8ve F crotchet linked to the ED quavers which precede it… But rolling the long low F is not a big problem if you want to do it.
FWIW, in the F major Paddy Fahy reel that MM plays at the end of Planxty’s “Woman I Loved So Well” album (a toss-up twixt that and “Cold Blow” for the best Planxty album???), which I do play, there are some ornamented low F crotchets that I play as kinda mordents to the E below with the short F key, thus: FE semiquavers F quaver. You drop to that figure from A so you can kinda tap down R1&2 plus 3 on the short F, then lift R3 very quickly and then open the F key again with it…
Thanks to the both of you. You’ve certainly given me some things to think about and practice!