I’m learning the Silver Spear from “the session” sheet music. There’s a triplet (3 a’s). Is this a good place for a roll?
Oh boy, now you’ve opened the can of worms.
You know what I do since I can hardly do that tune right let alone toss in any A rolls? I play ABA. So it’s FA ABA BAFA… (Sorry I don’t know proper ABC.)
So there’s some bad advice for you.
We played a different version of the Silver Spear the other night. I liked that one much better. I don’t remember how it went, but the B part was almost the same and the A part was simple enough I could pick up most of it after 3 tries.
Two responses:
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Yeah, I usually play a triplet on that part. Sometimes I do the AGA to vary things. By the way, I play my triplets using fingering (A, cut on B, strike on G); I’m not tonguing 3 A’s in a row. Although as a beginning flute player myself (having played whistle pretty steadily, almost daily (it’s a disease) for almost 5 years now), I have a hard time getting my fingers to do a nice, crisp A roll.
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My most common curmudgeonly comment: Use the sheet music just to get yourself set on the notes, but listen to recordings and other players as much as possible. Find a version you like and listen to it until you burn it into your auditory memory and then play that memorized version back to yourself in your head while you play the tune.
Despite everyone’s tendency to play this tune as fast as possible, it’s really nice at a fairly moderate pace, really emphasizing those triplets in both the A and B parts and the phrasing at the end of the A parts and really keeping a nice swing in the rhythm.
TED
That seems to be the description of what we call a roll.
As to the original question I’d say it’s a very good place for a roll on A. You can also use the ABA sequenze for variation..
Sincerely…-
- whisky
I generally roll, partially because I try never to miss an opportunity to work on my A rolls (A & B rolls seem to be my life’s work, alas)!
Side note … IF you are playing the Silver Spear alone (or you can get your session- or band-mates to do the same), a nice variation is to lengthen the F sharp at the beginning and roll on it, a la
~F3 A BAFA|dfed BBAG|~F3 A BAFA|dfed BBA2|
It’s even nicer in the first phrase of the B part, i.e.:
~f3 a b2af gfed|Bdde ~f3a bfaf|gfed BBA2|
I got this from Louise Mulcahy, so while not dyed-in-the-wool-traditional, it’s not totally bogus either
Sure, why not.
Maybe a more interesting question to ask is: What is the purpose or “meaning” of those notes? What is the phrasing of the melody at that point, and which of the possible phrasings conveys the musical feeling you want to communicate?
I assume your sheet music looks something like: |FA (3AAA BAFA|d
First, that’s not a notation that a flute or whistle player would be likely to write. A fiddler might play a treble bow, or a box or banjo player an actual triplet. But a wind player probably hears the “deep structure” of those repeated A’s as a single note |FA3| that can be broken up rhythmically in many different ways:
|FAAA|
|FA AA|
|FAA A|
|F~A3| = |F A{c}A{G}A| Long roll, syncopated
|FA ~A2| = |FA {c}A{G}A| Short roll
|FA (3A{c}A{G}A| Condensed roll
|FA {c}A/{b}A/{G}A| Double cut short roll
|FA{c}A A| Single cut
|FA A{c}A| Single cut
|F A{c}A{b}A| Single cuts
|FA (3.A.A.A| Triple tongue
And so on. Combine these with different phrasings of the following notes, and you have lots of expressive possibilities to experiment with.
Nice description and possibilities.
I’m going to try these out. Thanks a million.
And all of you leaving out the most elegant and simple solution: FAAF BAF
You can also do a “cran” on A if you have fast fingers or a C key.
I’ve been throwing in the following lately:
FADA BAFA
I sometimes flip it around too.
AAAF BAFA
Some good ideas to try! While I usually do a role at that spot, there are days, when my arthritis is flaring, that an A role is particularly painful. I then cheat with a glottal stop thing (“tuh cuh tuh”) or something like that. This can be done very fast and doesn’t sound “toungy”.
Clark
Except that doesn’t look like it describes a glottal stop or throating, but triple tonguing instead. Unless if by “cuh” you mean a throat stop, making it a mixed articulation.
I use this a lot. I got it from an epic recording of Seamus Ennis, I think.