Given the season, I thought I would thank contributors to this board over the years who have offered helpful hints that have improved my first 5 months of playing the Irish flute. Many of these key hints are reprised in Loren’s recent thread.
One old hint comes from Brad Hurley, and it was so useful I just want to point it out again. I had been having big problems getting even rolls on any note, and came across the thread:
In it, Brad suggests a way to play rolls on B (and similarly for A)
xoo ooo
ooo ooo
xoo ooo
xoo xxx
xoo ooo
This worked immediately for me to produce nice even rolls at a higher tempo than I managed previously. Interestingly, with the right sound in my ear, and feel in my fingers, all my other rolls improved as well. So thanks much for that.
But some questions for the board about rolls. The standard G roll
xxx ooo
xox ooo
xxx ooo
xxx xoo
xxx ooo
works pretty well, but by analogy to the B roll, is there a reason (other than it’s not traditional) not to use:
I generally cut all my top-hand rolls with the index (Cnat) finger. A holdover from GHB training, probably. The cut is more distinct, which is probably not “traditional” to those for whom such things matter.
A fun thing to do (after a good deal of practice) is a doubling roll (Not sure if there is another common name for it):
XXXOOO
XXOOOO
XOXOOO
XXXOOO
XXXXXX
XXXOOO
DOne well it can get nice clean triplets quickly. Easy to garble though.
An alternative is something like a crann on the top hand:
xxxooo
xxoooo
xxxooo
xoxooo
xxxooo
oxxooo
xxxooo
Which has a similar effect but seems to work well only in a few tunes because of timing issues. . .for me anyway.
Well, I can’t claim credit for those rolls! They’re really Matt Molloy and Mike Rafferty rolls, and quite a few other flute players use them besides. As I probably said in that earlier thread, they sound terrible when played slow, but at speed and with the right emphasis, they sound remarkably like a roll.
(these are two-handed rolls played on B and A…I cut all my rolls with the left hand and tap with the right)
I use this technique on B and A only because I can’t make my left hand do a regular roll on B and A in any consistent manner. If you can do the regular B roll as Avery LeVine describes above, there’s no reason to switch to this one. My left hand isn’t as coordinated as my right so rolls on B and A have always been harder for me.
You can do a long roll on C natural using this same principle, thusly:
oxx ooo
ooo ooo
oxx ooo
oxx xxo
oxx ooo
which also sounds totally strange played slowly but sounds quite good at tempo. I suspect this might be what Kevin Crawford did to play the long C rolls on “Young Tom Ennis” on his “In Good Company” album.
For bottom D, you’re out of luck…no roll possible there. You could cran, but I do that less and less on the flute these days, reserving it for the pipes!
If you’re comfortable with it, I don’t see a reason not to do it. Certainly don’t worry about some mythical “traditional” way of playing rolls – there are lots of different ways to play rolls, and this is solidly in the tradition, IMO.
Agreed. As a general rule, the end is more important than the means in this music: if you find a technique that works for you and produces the effect you want, use it.
A box-playing friend of mine once asked Paddy O’Brien whether a technique he’d been taught was an “acceptable” way to achieve a difficult passage on the accordion. O’Brien threw up his hands and said, “Look, this is peasant’s music. Just play it!”
Actually, though, I like Matt Paris’s solution better; hadn’t seen that one before, and will be working on that one myself! It’s true that it’s a little flatter but it sounds more like a roll because you cut with the D instead of the C#.
Hey, that is cool, Matt. I’m looking forward to trying it! I’ve wanted to find a way around the C# forever, and my present method … eh, not so much. So thanks, guys!
All I know is that when I learned this technique back in the 80s, the guy I learned it from said he learned it from Matt Molloy. Whether that’s true or not, I dunno, but sometimes when I’m listening to him it sounds like he’s doing B rolls that way.
