In a reel, if I’m on the note E and the next note is also and E and I want to play a roll on the 2nd E, what’s the best alternative?
Can you give a few bars (or all) of the actual tune you’re working with to help determine what would support the structure well?
Drowsy Maggie.
It’s the end of bar 1 and the start of bar 2 that I’m working out.
The setting is the same as here:
Easy. The roll is a short roll on 2 beats (quarter note). So just play the final E of Bar 1 followed by a short roll on E. Nothing tricky: E|~E2 = E| {A}E{D}E
Note that the fingering is exactly the same as a long roll on E. So it’s equivalent to playing a syncopated long roll starting on the final E of Bar 1, but the emphasis will be different. I’d tend to tongue the cut, and maybe separate it slightly, to stress the start of the next mini-phrase in Bar 2.
Alternatives could be:
o Substitute a cran for the short roll
o Cut and hold the E2: E| {A}E2
o Tap and hold the E2: E| {D}E2
o Slide and hold the E2: E| JE2
o Substitute the melody: E| DE
o Tongue and mid-cut the E2: E| E{A}E
I agree on the short roll. I don’t know that I could put it into words at the moment but: a sincopated long roll wouldn’t quite give the right rhythmic emphasis IMO. Perhaps it’s in the timing of the first E or the attack/emphasis on the second E that makes it work better in my head than a sincopated long roll. I think it needs to sound like an E, followed by an E short roll.
Short rolls!
I had totally forgotten about short rolls.
Thanks guys!
I was squeezing in a long roll instead. As you can imagine it wasn’t really sounding right.
I play the relevant part of Drowsy Maggie (in my baseline version, before seeking to vary) with full rolls on the crotchet Es at the start of each bar - usually tonguing the E that starts the roll. They are very quick, crisp rolls to get the right rhythmic feel, though - the roll coming in the first part of the crotchet to keep the emphasis on the on-beat (i.e not at the end of the “long” note as commonly in e.g. rolls on dotted crotchets in jigs). To me, that is what a “short roll” is - it is to do with the timing, rhythmic emphasis and placement within the “long” note on which it is placed, not so much with what elements are included within it. Personally I am not very keen on the effect of rolls that don’t commence with the main note, as in the “short roll” notation MTGuru gave above. The initial cut on the commencement of the beat tends IMO to become more of a grace-note prelude to the main note and to acquire a pitched-note effect, changing the melody. It is perfectly possible to play a full roll sequence (in this instance I use E{G}E{D}E, cutting the E with R1) effectively in this kind of context, maintaining the main note’s dominance and the cut’s status as neutrally pitched. Even if you don’t tongue the on-beat and tie the E across the bar, timing-wise there is still some (a very little) E before the cut as I do it - the cut is not on the beat.
Just moving slightly from the short roll thing and trying
not to highjac the thread here.(appologies to Highland Piper)
but I think its connected,
at our session last night they played ‘Jim Ward’s’ Jig,
now it sounded to me like they were playing 3G GAB
or variations of that for the 1st and 5th bars.
Would the 4th G be best cut or tongued following
a roll to keep things rhythmicly sound?
Or should I be playing it differently?
Nick
Any of cut, tongue or tap will serve in that context, but there are (of course) subtle differences of effect and there are also considerations of ease/fluency of finger-motion (which can affect your timing)… Myself, in those figures, I tend predominantly to (in this case exactly on the beat, just as a tongue-stroke would be) tap the repeated note following the roll:- ~3G {F}GAB.
Going back to Drowsy Maggie, one variant that is very effective for the detail in question is to do a heavy, breath-pushed, on the beat tap on D, and rather than bouncing the tapping R3 finger off as in a normal light tap, kinda push it on through its motion so that you get a very slight slide-off effect - combined with the breath push, this gets you a strongly emphasised on-beat between the pedal-point figures and also strengthens the naturally weaker E note.
Highland Piper: if you’re coming to Irish whistle/flute/pipes from the Highland pipes (like I did) it may take a while to get used to the flexibility in Irish music regarding phrasing and note selection and ornament selection. There are at least a dozen ways to play any particular phrase and the beauty of it all is to have a toolbox of variants at your disposal so that you can play a tune over and over but play it differently each time.
The principles, when they become really part of you, can be applied to any tune.
I did a couple little YouTube videos, one of a jig, one of a reel, demonstrating how you can take a certain phrase and play it in almost endless ways.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hyj5LMH6aOI
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6fmINqse5Y
I need to stress that NONE of the variants are the “real tune”. All are “the tune”. Irish tunes aren’t a set string of notes but more like a notion, which many different strings of notes can fulfill.
But as to the basic question about a roll preceeded or followed by the same note, on the whistle I’ll often just tongue, while on the pipes a cut or a pat must be thrown in to seperate the notes.
Thanks Pancelticpiper! I’ll check out your videos in a little while.
Actually, I started learning tin whistle many years before highland pipes, but I havent’ played in a long time and I pretty much lost what I had learned. I haven’t had any in-person instruction, but I followed Cathal McConnell’s original tutor (with the three cassette tapes), and Vinnie Kilduff’s video so I have a general idea how it’s supposed to go 
But as I’m sure everyone is aware, there’s a big difference between a “general idea” and actually playing a tune. 
I just found all the youtube videos by tradlessons, and they’re pretty nice, showing clearly (and slowly) one way to play the tune.
I was taught ITM very differently from most people, perhaps, in that my original teacher, Chris Moran, said “it’s better to learn 20 ways of playing one tune than to learn 20 tunes” and that’s how I was taught.
He would show me a tune… the very first was McLeod’s Reel… and as soon as I had caught onto the basic tune he would say “now it’s time to !#%& with it!” by which he meant it was time to really explore a large number of twists and turns, how to play each phrase in a number of different ways. To this day, learning ONE way to play a tune doesn’t seem like really learning the tune, to me.