Lesson #049, Fitting Different Rolls in 4/4 Time I

Saturday, April 11, 2009

Lesson #049, Fitting Different Rolls in 4/4 Time I

Hi Everyone,

We are going to start to put all of the rolls you learned previously into 4/4 time throughout the 8 measures that we've been working on. First I'd like to say that even though I've been going over a little bit of music theory with those four different notes used in music, you don't have to know these things to play the five string banjo. I'm explaining these rolls and patterns note for note as well, so someone who may not be interested in learning from these notes and their time values and as well from tablature when I start to go over it, can learn the five string from just watching and listening. Like I said in an earlier lesson, I'm going to teach in diffferent ways at the same time....you can pick which of these methods works best for you, or combine any of the methods to your liking. I myself like to learn everything I can, so thats why I'm giving you all the options I can give.

OK, that being said, lets move on to the rolls in this 4/4 time. I've given you a pattern to work off of in this lesson using the forward roll. We have to play eight notes if we want to use them all to fit into one measure. If you count along with this pattern you will see that we have eight notes. We can use this forward pattern now over the eight measures. The thing we have to watchout for is the seventh measure. With this pattern we are using sometimes we have to break up the roll so that we can play through a quick chord change. After a while, when you learn all of these rolls, you'll be doing things without even realizing it. Liking putting 1/4 notes in different places to keep things going. Using these different rolls in these eight measures is a very important excersise in your right hand, and also for changing between the three chords close to the nut. It is also very important in the start of your Improvisations.

When you are using these different rolls throughout these eight measures, we aren't playing any particular song or tune, we are excersising our hands and our minds for playing the five string.

I'm going to use these eight measure as well to play through the MELODY of a simple song in the near future, so you can see how these rolls and patterns are going to be used to play the melody and also to improvise over that melody.

Play well Everyone