Hey guys!
Been trying to learn church street blues by tony rice. Cant get th double down up rolls to flow at all?
Anyone else have this problem?
You can see him do it here
its those rolls on the G chord and c words notes
i mean i can do them but not to those speeds and not with out it feeling mega awkward!
any ideas??
Tony appears to use finger movement for this. Honestly, I think pure alternate is actually simpler, and opens the door to a variety of twists on the basic pattern without requiring any substantial change in your technique - like this one which combines the forward roll with string skips and four strings:
https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/clips/broken-roll-tk1/
If you haven’t watched the broadcast on this yet, recommended. Took us years to work this stuff out and the end result is by far the simplest presentation of it we have done to date.
https://troygrady.com/channels/talking-the-code/crosspicking-with-the-wrist/
There are clips with Georges Shuffler that shows how to do the DDU forward roll (and UUD backward). Tony Rice has his own way to do it, which is peculiar. Tony’ brother Wyatt does that too, and can go pretty fluid and fast, but in a way which looks more like Shuffler (no such use of fingers like Tony Rice does).
It’s a mini-sweep (DD) that you have to escape for doing the following upstroke in a non string-hopping way. That escape motion to upstroke can be just wrist deviation, similarly to the regular alternate pattern (i.e. when you do UDU), though Tony Rice seems to do it differently.
It’s very doable and has a distinctive smoother sound as opposed to DUD. But it can be tricky to get it consistent (because it’s non-symmetrical ) and to combine with alternate picking.
Since I’m working on my crosspicking lately I decided to stay away from that - as long as I need to get the alternate pattern ingrained. I agree with Troy that it can be more a complication than anything to do that.
I’ve watched about 60% of the cross picking seminar so far and i like the clock face idea.
I guess with this tune i was just suckered into wanting to play it like tony plays it. Im a big user of the EJ economy picking method so i guess this appealed to me here with tony.
@blueberrypie
thanks for the george shuffler links I’m gonna check him out today. I know what you mean with regards to focusing on straight cross picking first.
what about a hybrid solution like d-d-m?
hey guys i watched Chris Eldridge play it today on youtube and i think he actually plays DDDU!!! Tried it today and its so much smoother!
@Tom_h : you might be interested in this (@ the 12:50 mark)
He elaborates on Clarence White use of rest stroke as opposed to George Shuffler for executing the DDU roll with first a rest-stroke and what he calls a ‘swing stroke’ (first time I hear that) which has the escape motion to get to the upstroke. So … if I follow him correctly Shuffler would do 2 “swing-strokes” and upstroke whereas Clarence white would first use a rest-stroke, in a similar way a Gypsy Jazz player would do
I could be wrong on that but it seems to me that Tony Rice has his own peculiar way of doing something that sounds in-between, by using finger motion. Downstroke are more of a sweep (like Clarence White would do), but in a smoother way.
By the way, I just recalled that Al Di Meola is very good at DDU and UUD patterns on 3 strings, you could check out his movements as well
Is he ?
That sounds strange to me as I often heard about Al Di Meola stressing on doing full alternate picking for everything.
FWIW from a pure speed perspective I’m convinced that the alternate DUD roll can be played way faster than the DDU version (at least that’s the case for me, and I used to to DDU for years …)
I know, that seems out of character almost, but here is an example (starting at about 38:30)
Ouch… that’s priceless!. Well… with all due respect he’s wrong on that. Molly Tuttle would outrun him by a few bpm miles 
on that backward roll.
i want a backdrop like that!!! the pink makes me feel calm lol
lol … Not me. Looks like they shot the vid in a pole dancing club 
