I have been working diligently on my rolls getting the rhythm even and up to speed but I have been stuck on the pesky A and B. My rolls on A are marginal and my rolls on B are downright atrocious. Does anyone have any tips on rolling these two nasty notes. I have been cutting one up and taping one down. Maybe this isn’t the best way. Any help would be appreciated.
Those rolls are my bane. I try to do them slowly, over and over. I also try to do finger exercises without the whistle, by drumming my first three fingers in a differing rhythms and speeds, working toward smoothness and building up strength and consistency. I’ve seen a VEEERRY gradual improvement in my A and B rolls. Also, I find tunes that feature those rolls and play those sections over and over, very slowly. Sometimes, in session at speed, I’ll hit one of those puppies perfecty and I’m thrilled.
“trilled”, shurley. The “h” is silent. 
stay hoopy,
Mike
Rolls take a whole long time to get solid, in my experience. The only way to learn them, I think, is to slow them down and to perform them very deliberately with exaggerated finger movement. No matter how you’ll want to play them in tunes up to tempo eventually (straight or delayed), I think they need to be practiced straight, with an even rhythm. Review Brother Steve’s Dah-Blah-Blah method. You need to play them so slowly that you can count each eighth (using a metronome is a painful but very instructive exercise here). This goes for all rolls, including A & B rolls. A rolls are harder than B rolls (on the whistle) once you get the cut with L1 crisp and short. Both can be mastered by working on them every day and not speeding up too soon. And relax your top finger…
Avoid finger tension and death grip. Focus on accurate placement of the tapping finger instead of getting a “tight” seal. Finger independence, and as others have said, rhythm also have a lot to do with getting the right sound.
Yes indeed, this was how I first started learning those long rolls. Brother Steve’s method proved brilliant.
Try stretching your fingers out before practice, or get one of those hand squeezing tools, anything to losen up those fingers. Playing a low D then coming to the high D is one way to go. Makes it feel like a child’s toy to the fingers.
Only thing I’d add is, make sure all your fingers are relaxed, death grip is a no-no!
Do you guys know why A and B rolls are any harder than E and F# ones? Physically, they’re the same, but they use opposite hands. It is just that your left hands are less coordinated?
Not the way I play them – on both E and F# rolls I cut with the third finger of my top hand. That splits the roll across both hands, which is easier, IMO.
Are there any other guitar (or other stringed instrument) players here who also feel that the exact opposite is true for them? My left hand is much more agile and coordinated than my right. And I’m not a lefty, I might add.
Not for me. I play guitar too, but when it comes to rolls with the left hand on the whistle, I’m slower than a wet week.
Mick
OK, let’s really throw a curve ball into the equation…
I am left handed, play guitar, and find A rolls to be my most challenging roll…but the catch is I play whistle with my right hand on top! Don’t know why, it was just the way my hands went when I picked a whistle up for the first time.
Practice them every day but don’t practice too long. Especially when I first tried them, I found my fingers tensing up after a minute or so of steady practice. Take a break, stretch and relax then start again. If the fingers are still tight, practice something else and come back tomorrow. Enjoy the journey, Grasshopper.
Well in technical terms, this is playing the whistle left-handed. Perhaps that is why you just started playing that way, but then again, I am right-handed in a lot of things, but I too play whistle left-handed (right hand on top) and I also picked up the whistle for the first time like this, and it stuck. Figure that one out.
This probably isn’t going to help much, sorry. I do appreciate that a good few folks have this issue, but I’ve never for the life of me quite understood why. Nor can I recall it having been much of a problem for anyone I have taught ITM articul/ornament-ation techniques to. I don’t remember having a problem myself so far as I can remember my early stages with such things. (It was along time ago!).
Once you have mastered the basic relaxed, crisp tap and, separately, the cut, with every finger, a little practise should let you do a roll with any finger combination. Why the L/top hand A and B ones might be any harder than any others I don’t understand - unless the person has not got a proper secure support system for their whistle or flute and is trying to use those particular fingers from a tense, gripping starting position. In which case, sort out your hold and learn to relax. Practise the taps - throwing a bouncy finger at the tube/tone-hole - and cuts - a relaxed hop/blip - separately, then gradually build them into a joined sequence and speed up, always making sure you relax between the very brief voluntarily controlled muscle tensions that drive the discreet motions - and that no other part of the hand is tense.
Getting the timing right in terms of the musical use of the technique, the correct placement of it within the note/note sequence to achieve the desired/relevant effect can’t really be dealt with until you master the mechanics.
It was the same with me for the first, I don’t know, six months or so. I never had a teacher so nobody “corrected” me, but I decided to switch to the more common hold after that anyway, just for the sake of conformity. 
How’s that working out for you? Set you back some in time for re-learning everything you already did? Confuse you a little? I guess 6 months isn’t that bad. I know too many tunes, too much technique, and have had too much solid whistle time put in to switch for “conformity”, personally I’m just not interested anymore. There was a time when I was worried about it, but I soon realized my time spent worrying about it was time wasted.
Cheers
I used to think that, but I am no longer sure that’s correct. I think there is something to be said for teaching tunes to beginners with cuts and taps and rolls all in and keeping good time, just slowing it down. Cuts and taps in particular are more part of the tune than bits you can throw in later when you have the tune down. Not clear-cut, but that at least is the tendency of my current thinking.
I do both - practice the mechanics a bit and work with tunes that include ornamentation like Kesh jig has been very helpful. Someone posted the ornaments for Kesh a month or two ago slowed way down for practice and that helped me a lot, you may be able to find with a search. Or pm me and I will try & get them to you. I like the ornaments best that seem to be a natural fit for the melody.
FYIW I’m a lefty who play’s guitar r-handed, bodhran l-handed, flute & whistle r-handed & I don’t worry about ornaments, just learning tunes. As a beginner I figure the finer points will take care of themselves as I get better at the basics. Kind of the 80/20 rule philosphy.
Deisman
I was still basically just toying around on the whistle by that time, so the switch wasn’t bad at all for me. But yeah, if I were still playing “leftie” at this point, though, I definitely wouldn’t switch now (been playing for about 2.5 years).
I did the same thing…Must be a common ‘error’ that some ‘fix’ and others don’t.
Mick