Something clicked in my head the other day and I suddenly understood rolls. Not to say that I can play them well, but at least I’ve got the idea in my head. I credit Brother Steve for much of this breakthrough.
Brother Steve’s tutorial focuses on using rolls in place of dotted quarter notes, e.g., he has an example rolling the initial F# in the A part of Rambling Pitchfork.
The Sessioneer mentions that (long) rolls can also replace a 3 eight note figure that begins and ends on the same note. That was another light bulb. (Actually, understanding that the roll replaces the entire 3 note figure – rather than becoming a 5 note figure, if you will – was illuminating.)
Don’t worry, we’re getting to the question .
Now, I admittedly don’t have the best ear, but it sounds to me that in many cases, whistlers play some kind of ornamentation on 3 eight note figures that don’t begin and end on the same note, e.g., a descending run, or an ABB pattern (as you commonly see in jigs). I’ve always thought of that as a “roll” but it seems that it is not. So my question is, what kind of ornamentation would be “typically” played on a descending run, or on an ABB?
Swapping in a roll for three consecutive eight notes descending is pretty common. (Though you certainly would not want to play it that way every time!) Examples might be the beginning of the B part in “Joy of My Life” or all over the place in “Devils of Dublin”.
As for ABB patterns in a jig, I will occasionally use a roll instead. Either note might be used, depending on where it was in the piece and my mood when I did it. Or just cut between the duplicated notes. Or turn the last two notes into a short roll, or a long roll sped up until it fits into the space of two eighth notes, or…
In a descending run where the notes are sequential, like BAG, I might be inclined to tap onto the last note, giving BA{F}G. That’s assuming the note is in a place I want to accent, e.g. the downbeat or the upbeat. A general rule of thumb is that if you’re going up to a note, you can cut it, and if you’re going down to a note, you can tap it. If there’s a gap of a third in the run, as in GED, you can fill in the gap and end up with a triplet: (3GFE D.
ABB patterns, there are a whole range of things you can do. You can cut or tap between the B’s, cut the A, or whatever. In a phrase like the first part of “Strop the Razor”:
BGG AGG|BGG AGE|DGG GFG|DGG G3
My tendency is to cut the B’s and A’s and tongue between the G’s; this gives a nice backbeaty groove.
I’ll second that. I have been struggling with ornamentation but using Brother Steve’s pages and also Tony Dixon http://www.tonydixonmusic.co.uk/tutorial/ornamentation.html who has some very clear paragraphs in his tutorial. At least to me they were.
Thanks to everyone for the replies. I find them very useful. As it turns out, after my original posting I went into the chat room and had a discussion about it there. (Why there were a half-dozen people in the chat room at 11:30 PM on a Thursday I can’t say
It’s especially interesting to me that people replace something like ABB with a roll. To my musically naive mind, that seems like heresy – you’re destroying the tune! And in my hands, it probably would! So I’ll stick with the less challenging ornaments for now, but I really find it enlightening to see how people think about these things.
Destroying the tune? Not at all! In that example I gave earlier
BGG AGG|BGG AGE|DGG GFG|DGG G3
there’s a whole universe of things you can do while still maintaining the basic integrity of the tune. Compare
BGG AGG|~B3 AGE|DGG GFG|DGG G3
with
BGG ~A3|BGG AGE|DGG GFG|DGG G3
or
~B3 AGG|~B3 AGE|DGG GFG|DGG G3
or
~B3 ~A3|(3Bcd B AGE|~G3 GFG|DGG G3
or even (throwing some chromaticism and McGoldrickish short rolls into the mix)
BDD ADD|BD_B AGE|~G2 ~G2 ~G2|DGG G3
All this is pretty much in keeping with the general shape of the melody; all I’m doing is twiddling the details. This kind of thing becomes well-nigh instinctual when you’ve been playing and listening for a while.
Yeah, I dont wanna pile on with disagreement but remember that you are looking at sheet music and my biggest gripe (in celebrated rant about 40 pages ago) is where the editor shows triplets where many normally play rolls without even a hint. I think a little tilde in parentheses over the triplet would cover both bases. Newcomers would know, insteading of getting proprietary about what they saw on the page.
i would venture to say this: if you have a tunebook full of jigs and there are no notated rolls, then you are going to have to adapt and re-learn things down the road as you accept the style as played by its practitioners.
Jigs are full of possibilities like that and it can just sound too mechanical to always play those triplets. Morrison’s is a good example. Many notated versions have the e and b in first bar notated as upper and lower neighbor triplets, but many people play one or both of the strong beats as rolls or at least something other than triplets. Whether you do the same thing everytime or vary, its in the spirit to play with that opening phrase and to be open-minded about strong phrase “spots” like those opening notes.
No final authority (like classical music) with tunes, just your evolved style by listening to live players and records. So put away yer apprehension about violating something!!!
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