By “roll” i mean fretting 2 notes on different strings with one finger.
Do you think rolls can be executed at high speeds or its more common to fret each note with a different finger at higer speeds?
I always used rolls when possible, but now that my picking speed improved - i find that left hand rolls are the weak spot.
Should i keep practicing rolls and try to improve them or is it better to always use different fingers?
I hate barre fingerings and avoid them! But this is a topic we discuss in the upcoming Gambale interview. Frank is a master of this and does it across three and four strings using almost the entire finger length and with great clarity. Check that thread for a sneak peek slow motion clip. The descending fourths phrase at the end of the lick is a Frank signature, and it is almost all barre / roll.
So rolls are fine for speedy playing even with pinky finger?
Those finger rolls are incredibly hard, and something I just can’t do. I look forward to hearing Frank Gambale discussing it, I can’t recall hearing anyone discussing it before.
Lets say you have a A minor pentatonic ascending fourths pattern:
start on 6th string
A-D, C-E, D-G, E-A, G-C etc.
how would you play it without rolls?
I remember reading a few lines about finger rolls in one of Troy Stetina’s books, but at the time, I couldn’t unravel what he was trying to say based on just text and a couple of black and white photos. Viva video!
“Single Note Soloing” by Ted Greene is filled with rolled licks and has a whole page with drawings discussing the technique. He also offers alternate fingers on some of the licks to get around it as well. It’s a great book to aid with memorizing shapes and learn some short crosspicking licks.
Bad answer, perhaps, but I probably wouldn’t. I’ve always struggled to get both the muting but also the articulation clean on barred rolls like that, and have generally decided that in all but isolated instances it’s not worth the loss of cleanliness. I might occasionally squeeze in a 4th like that as part of a run, especially for bluesier stuff, but the odds of me deciding to play a line of 4th interval jumps is essentially nil. 
That said, if you really wanted to chase this sound, and your fretting hand was stretchy enough, you could conceivably arrange these as single string jumps - 5-10 on the low E, 8 on the E then 7 on the A, 5-10 on the A then 7 on the A, 7 on the D - I would think that if you could get that 5-fret jump with your pointer and pinkie, then rather than rolling the subsequent 4th fretting one note with your middle and the other with your ring would probably work pretty well… though, I’m writing this without a guitar in hand so who knows.
Tapping, if you’re any good at it, would make this a REALLY easy run, too.
This biggest thing is knowing exactly where to place you finger (usually the index or middle) to anticipate the next notes. For example on a major sweep shape (the ones with three consecutive notes on the same fret) when ascending you need to hit the d string with the exact tip of the middle finger then roll to the g with the pad then the b with the skin right above the joint. The biggest tip is get used to exactly how much pressure it takes to fret the string so as you roll you are just slightly letting go so the string isn’t fretted but without lifting the finger from the fretboard. Ascending is going to be harder so you might want to practicing descending first as it will be easier to get a handle of and the finger placement for correct anticipation is nearly identical.
I guess in the beginning we all struggled doing that small A-shape bar with ring or pinky and after a while we don’t even think about it.
I didn’t find it yet but there’s a cool Tommy Emanuel video on YT where he shos his left thumb which looks totally different than his right due to palying basslines with it.
Honestly I don’t know if you’re right for you personally with your statement, but in general I’d say we all can learn way more thing than we think.
I don’t like rolling too, and probably the interview won’t change that.
Just the reason for me is another, the most wonderful thing on guitar is that I can feel the strings and on bars there’s a massive reduction on that feedback for me.
No intention to discuss your your post, i just used it to point out that we can approach a lot of things if the body has time to ‘learn’ new abilities, which in this case is probably flexibility in the last finger joint.
By the way, I tried this last night. I don’t do much 3nps pentatonics, but between this and an idea a buddy of mine shot over to me that I wanted to try, I think maybe I should as there are some pretty interesting ideas in here (and Rusty Cooley has done some interesting stuff in this vein, too).
It actually worked better than I expected, with one caveat - I found the roll with my ring finger was actually pretty clean at the sort of speeds I could likely pull this off at, and was priobably easier than using discrete fingers for that section (certainly, way more so than the pointer finger would be). In fact, the trickier part playing this with the ring finger as a roll was the part when you got up towards the top of the pentatonic box, and had to go from a 2-fret gap to a 3-fret gap, and HAD to use discrete fingers - it kind of broke up the groove.
If I can get this up to a respectable tempo (basically, if I can get 3nps stretches comfortable in pentatonics, because IMO that’s the hardest part of this arrangement) I’ll post up a video clip.
Personally I find this varies with the passage. I’m very comfortable rolling with the first finger, and less so with the others, probably the least with the third finger. My basic MO is to roll with first, but do alternating fingers with 2 3 and 4, but again it depends on the passage.
I tell students to explore the pros and cons of each depending on the passage, but shoot for finding non-rolling options to start, as I think they are generally cleaner and easier to manage and speed up.
I’ve seen a variety of instructional material, some telling you to never roll and some saying to become a roll master. For example, Andrew Green’s Jazz Guitar Technique: never roll. Jack Grassell’s Monster Chops: Roll, roll, and roll some more.
So often the best answer seems to be ‘depends.’
Here’s a musical example where I would likely roll with the first finger, but not for any/many of the 7th and 8th fret bits. A good challenge by the way is to try this same pattern in the other pentatonic positions…brings about a lot of fingering challenges where you have to really calculate whether you want to roll or not. Sometimes I think rolling really makes sense.
Doesn’t surprise me that much that Frank is a roller as I think he does quite a lot of quartal lines, no?
Hi Everyone
It actually an interesting topic that i thought about a lot(befere this post)
There is way to play most of arpeggios WITHOUT ROLLS(Kinda)
Thats the "Jason Richardson Method " i think)There is a clip of him playing Serrana almost without rolls at a pretty high tempo,he says in his “The Secret of Sweep” that he never does rolls exept from major 6 string shape (example from the low E 5 than 7 on A and D strings,6 on a G and roll on the 5 frets of B and a high E) he plays the E string 5 fret with his index, 7 fret with his 2 and 3 finger than 2 on 6 fret g string and a roll with his index on b and e)I^ve tried them and had a great progress,they are much cleaner than those with rolls BUT
He lied
He DOES ROLL sometimes Serrana
at 0^29 at the A shape major arpeggio before the diminished section he does a roll with the 2 finger
watch at 0.25 speed
I struggled to play this part with his fingering for this shape,because its not comfortable in the high position
I can post the fingering later,if enyone is interested
Thanks
Also he does not do pull offs/hammers while sweeping
I tried to play the sweeps with rolls a while ago and played them without rolls for almost a year
I^ll say that the mix of both systems works great,because there is times when its much easier to roll,and there is times when its easier not to roll
Pros: You will be much cleaner with this mix and have a few fingering to choose from
Cons: takes more time to get used to doing both methods
Ayuh, that! Some folks have stubby fingers wide enough to easily stomp on two strings comfortably at once. I do not. And while there are plenty of places I roll naturally, when thinking about it, I generally try to find another way.