Some "long rolls" and how to use them

Before reading this page, you need to be familiar with my method of learning to play rolls - the dah-blah-blah method.

As you know, the previous page was devoted to doing. Now you are permitted a little thinking, a little intellectual fodder. (Just a little mind you.) If you have reached this page, you should be able to do a convincing "dah-blah-blah" on a low F#. So, how about some non-infantile language?

The device I showed you how to execute on the previous page is generally known as a long roll.

What you did, in effect, was to play three F# notes of equal length, articulated by tonguing, by a cut, and by a tap respectively. That is your basic long roll - it's that simple.



Notation for long rolls

Before we go on to look at what you can do with a long roll, let's reinforce what we learned in the dah-blah-blah method by looking at the proper notation for a long roll.

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The first example shows you the whole picture. The three eighth-note F#s are your three syllables ("dah-_ah-_ah") and the cut (grace note of A) and the tap (grace note of E) are your "bl"s to fill in the blanks in the phrase, if you see what I mean.

And just to drive home the point, the second example shows a cut tacked on the front of an F#-E-F# sequence. This is a perfectly valid and lovely-sounding ornament - one that you should use - but it is not a roll.



Using long rolls on F#

OK, so we have learned to play a nice, evenly spaced long roll on an F#. Where can we put it?

Since the above example is in jig rhythm, let's try an F# roll in a jig. Here's an obvious place to put one - on a dotted quarter note on the "on" beat. Below is the jig The rambling pitchfork. Our F# roll can fit nicely on the dotted quarter note at the start of the first bar.

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First line of The rambling pitchfork, with long rolls on F#(45K)

I've indicated the roll by means of an asterisk (*) symbol. Most often, you'll see a curly dash (~) above the note to indicate a roll. I have used an asterisk

  1. to remind you that it's always optional and
  2. because the "~" looks ugly in my ABC music program!

Another example of a long roll on F#, in a reel this time, is the first note in The wise maid, given below.

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First line of The wise maid, with long rolls on F# (??K)

Rolls on other notes

So far we've only covered the note of F#. To play rolls on other notes, follow the fingering patterns you learned for cuts, and practise getting a nice even dah-blah-blah:

To play a roll on E...

cut with the G finger

and tap with the D finger

To play a roll on F#...

cut with the G finger

and tap with the E finger

(You've done that one already...)

To play a roll on G...

cut with the G finger

and tap with the F# finger

To play a roll on A...

cut with the B finger

and tap with the G finger

To play a roll on B...

cut with the B finger

and tap with the A finger



Long rolls on G

Here's a common and not-too-difficult tune to practise your long G rolls on: The banshee.

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First line of The banshee, with long rolls on G (90K)


Long rolls on E

Let's go to E rolls now, leaving the tricky A and B rolls for later. In fact E rolls have their own difficulty, which is getting your 3rd finger to tap snappily. The first line of the well-known reel The morning dew gives you plenty of opportunities to try long E rolls.

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First line of The morning dew, with long rolls on E (60K)

Let's move on to a new page to tackle long rolls on A and B.

Updated 15 October 2004