I was playing around with rolls today, and I tried tapcut
instead of cuttap. And it sounded interesting.
So I was wondering, is there a reason the rolls are taught as the latter, instead of the former (which I suppose you could call an inverse roll)?
Is it easer to do a roll than an inverse roll at speed?
Is there a subtle sound difference that makes the inverse roll less traditional?
What’s the dealio?
You may find this thread of interest:
Thanks, yes. I saw that thread when it was occuring… and it really got me working on my rolls!
But what I was wondering (and maybe I missed this in the aforementioned thread) was why rolls are taught the way they are instead of the reverse?
I have a related question:
How far back do you find these ornaments named?
By which I mean…
I have no doubt if you went back to 1870 you’d find Irish trad players and they’d be using ornamentation in their playing. But would they call the ornaments by the names we know them as, such as cuts, taps, rolls, double-cut rolls, cranns, backstiches?
What I’m wondering is if the tendancy to name the techniques didn’t come along well after the techniques themselves developed.
–James
OK, I’ll bite… what’s a backstitch?
Backstitch is a UP technique sometimes borrowed by flutists:
Say you have an ascending B-Cnat-D triplet.
To do a backstitch you play it this way:
x o x | o o o for the B
x x x | o o o as a tap
o x x | o o o for the C
o x x | x x x for the D
It gives a kind of hard “bubbly” effect when done at speed.
I think the names we have for ornaments are pretty neat in their own right. There are also “thrills” and “hammer-ons” and “trebles” and who-knows-what-else. The names of the ornaments are evocative and a source of much fascination for me.
–James
If you stop thinking of a roll as a Roll, and just think of cuts & taps/strikes, the issue of playing it in the right order or reverse disappears, I think.
My hunch why you’d want to go note-cut-note-tap-note generally is that you are then in a better position to play a cut on the following strong beat, which shouldn’t be tapped. say: EG{A}G{F}G | {B}G2… (I know, I know, Jim. But Conal O’Grada is Conal O’Grada. Generally you want to cut the beat).
In many Jigs you will find figures like this: d|BAA A2… at the end of phrases. Here it makes sense to play d|BA{G}A {B}A2 allowing you to cut on the beat. The other way of playing such phrases (favored by Brother Steve) is d|B.A.A {B}A2… where the “.” is a tongued note.
Whatever James is describing there, it has little or actually nothing to do with backstitching as pipers would know it. Backstitching on the pipes is a technique involving runs of tight [staccato]triplets stitching up a tune by attaching a certain two note figure to melody notes to create the triplet. No taps or cuts are involved
eg a figure like ded in a jig would become d 3(GFd
ece could be played as 3(eca e when stitched
My apologies, Peter, and I am glad to know what the term really means.
The ornament I’ve been learning and incorrectly calling the backstitch I first encountered on Rob Greenway’s pages.
Rob is a good guy and wound’t purposefully have wrong info on his site…I am guessing he learned this technique from another flutist who called it that mistakenly.
–James
I’ll tell you this much. It pays to learn it the ‘right’ way so to speak. All you have to do is drop by my web site and listen to any of the soundbytes I have made. (which is all but the one I labeled otherwise) They all sound ok, but if you pay attention my ornamentation sounds a bit ‘muddy’ and that is due to the fact that starting out I never knew where to look for resources on how to play or whatever, and I just tried my best guess as how to make ‘those fluttery sounds’.
After a year or so (let me rephrase that… after about 2-3 years) of doing it wrong it’s taken years to un-train myself and re-train myself correctly (I also don’t practice near as much as I ought to, and I make the things!! 
The local hoolie has helped more than anything just in the last 6 months), and in fact many of my errors were doing some of the rolls ‘backwards’ and a nasty NASTY habbit of resorting to the center of the whistle for all of my ornamentation. I have to forcefully remember to use the whole whistle instead of the center three holes for everything. I’m getting there slowly but surely.
Take care,
John