Combining quick graces -- the Irish Roll

An quick and effective way to get the roll ornament

We’ve had a series of fiddle-based articles — next time, a general discussion of learning styles. If you’re not a fiddler or musician interested in ornaments, join me next time!

After this post, we’ll leave the subject of ornaments for a while, but if you’d like to go deeper into it, and like my take on it, you might like to check out the ten videos in Technique Video Group 5 on my fiddle-online site.

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If you’d like to make ornaments a part of your playing, it’s best to get to know them physically, as we’ve discussed in the earlier articles about slow graces and quick graces, before trying to insert them into a tune. Last week’s column talked about combining slow and quick into an exciting blast of grace notes that’s easy to do and can really bring out the beauty of an important note of a tune.

Today, we’ll again mix two ornaments discussed earlier, this time combining the two kinds of quick graces, the tap and the lift, or mordent. This is the easiest and quickest way to get a good Irish roll.

Because of written music, many people think of the roll as a version of the “turn,” which is a slow ornament that fills in a long note, and is used in classical music and in slower fiddle tunes. But to my mind, the roll is a different animal.

Since we’re working here in writing, here’s look at an example of the turn. As you can see, it noodles around a single note, going above, through, and below it, before settling back on the same note. At right is how it might be written in musical notation using a symbol.

Rolls use the same symbol, which encourages some to think of it as simply a fast turn. But to me, it doesn’t feel like a turn but more like a combination of a tap and a mordent. The tap is done by a finger above the main note, and as we’ve seen in the earlier post, it’s not so much a note as a flick of the finger that interrupts the vibration of the string; it doesn’t even matter which finger is used. The mordent is a lift of the main note to reveal… well, not much. In fact, the finger doesn’t even have to completely lift off the string; it too is an interruption of the main note before we hit it again.

To quickly learn a good roll, try the exercise below. As always, grace notes are rhythmic. We are aiming for the big note, not the grace note itself. One common stumbling block for music readers is that grace notes use a lot of ink and therefore get more attention than they deserve! Written grace notes can be pretty misleading. You might recall, for example, from last week, that a slow grace note done by changing the bow direction early, plus a single flick of a finger, results in an effect that would be written down as three grace notes. Some readers will see that and think of them simply as notes they have to somehow play super fast.

The exercise below will get a roll going for you. We’re using a count of three — one bow for the whole measure, broken into three quarter notes simply by a flick of a finger for the second beat, and a lift/mordent for the third beat. We don’t really want to hear these grace notes as actual notes; the ornaments are there only to break apart one long bow into three quarter notes. Be sure to feel the beat. These grace notes mark out the second and third beats, so get in as long a quarter note as you dare, before tapping or lifting a finger.

Once you’re comfortable with this, you can condense it, like squeezing the bellows of an accordion — first try the exercise above faster, then try it as shown below, where the distance between the grace notes has shrunk to one eighth note.

When you’re ready, launch the flick with the third finger followed immediately by the lift/mordent, landing on the original note on time. Remember, it’s all about timing. If the roll doesn’t come out right, let it go and try again next time. It’ll come. When the main note is on the first finger, as in the example above, oftentimes the third finger feels stronger for launching the roll with the weight of the hand behind it, though the second finger can work fine too.

I’ve decided not to write out exactly what happens in a roll — trying to read and analyze this kind of thing only bogs you down. Take the time to get your muscle memory through the process above. Aim to land on time on the beat notes, and give your overworked analytical and visual abilities a rest! Or, better yet, divert them by looking out a window and seeing how many birds fly by. The great violinist Itzhak Perlman once said he liked to practice violin while watching baseball games on TV with the sound turned off!

Below on the left is how a roll might work in a jig, where you hear the plain note, then the roll takes place during the second eighth note, landing on a plain eighth note to finish the beat. The rhythmic effect is shown in the middle — we hear a quarter note + eighth note, with the roll marking out the arrival of the eighth note. This reinforces the jig rhythm; the roll’s not just there to fill in space during a longer note.

On the right is how the same effect is notated in the first two bars of “Morrison’s Jig.”

In reels, the rolls are used similarly but there are some differences. Sometimes people will hear the example below (from the beginning of “Cooley’”) as a roll, because when it’s played fast, you hear the tap above and then the note below, but really these are just two Bs separated by the tap of the 3d finger.

Below is a roll in a reel (from the B part of “The Banshee”). At left, it’s written with the typical notation for a roll. You can ignore the ornament, though, in order to get the timing down, and just play the plain notes without the roll. On the right, you see the roll written out. Whether you play the plain notes or the roll, they have the same basic effect when we hear the tune.

As always, getting physically used to doing the exercises above will teach your muscle memory how to make use of a roll. It’s not about whether you understand it in your head. Even if you think you get the point of all this, you still need to allow time to give your muscles a chance to get comfortable with using the effect. Then you can throw it in where you feel it, and focus, not on the ornaments, but on the flow of the tune.

Below is a brief video that will give you a chance to physically review and practice the roll as discussed above, with audio and bowing, etc. It’s from my Technique Video Group 5, which has 10 brief videos focusing on various ornaments done with both left hand and bow.

The video below is reserved for paid subscribers, in order to be fair to folks who pay a nominal fee for my technique videos on fiddle-online.

Video for learning the Roll