Rolling Along

The Forward Backward Roll

If you are not familiar with this roll then definitely spend sometime with it here. If you need to, hit pause and play one note at a time. Worry about playing in time after you can play all the notes cleanly and in the right order. After you get the hang of it, try the roll with the band/metronome using the Tunefox player. Remember to adjust the tempo slider to find a tempo that is comfortable for you.

When playing with a metronome, make playing cleanliness a priority. Sacrifice speed to minimize mistakes, muscle tension, and control your dynamics. Work on speed after you can play a passage cleanly. If you have excessive muscle tension at a certain speed, then that speed is too fast for now. Practice slower with less tension and remember that feeling when trying to go faster.

Playing slow can also allow you to focus on other musical aspects like tone, dynamic control and touch. Just because you can play this roll at 150 BPM doesn't mean you shouldn't practice it at 80 or slower. There's a lot of music in those slow tempos.

After you've found a speed that you can play this roll consistently and cleanly with minimal muscle tension, then begin to push your speed. Push your speed. That means go slightly faster than your comfortable tempo, not straight to "Ricky Skaggs" fast.

Extra Challenge

This exercise has you play one forward roll, and then an open G "half note", which lasts the same amount of time as the 8 note roll. This helps give you some time until starting your next roll. In that time, pay close attention to the metronome. After hitting the last open G note you will hear 3 more clicks before the measure will repeat. Once you can keep track of your timing, try playing a second forward roll and start it where you were playing that open G note. It's not written in the tablature, but it will work, and it's great practice!

The Forward Backward Roll

In the next lesson, we'll add one fretted note. It's gonna take us from a roll to a lick with just one finger!