Rolling Technique (Guitar Lesson TE-006) How to play

Justin's Completely Free Guitar Lessons, Technique Lesson TE-006, Lesson 6.

Rolling is an important and often confusing technique that I'll explain in this lesson.

Find the related course notes on the following link:
http://justinguitar.com/en/TE-006-Rolling.php

More notes about it on the web site...
TE = Technique area of site

Taught by Justin Sandercoe.

Full support at the justinguitar web site where you will find hundreds of lessons on a wide range of subjects, and all the scales and chords that you will ever need! There is a great forum too to get help, no matter what the problem.

And it is all totally free, no bull. No sample lessons, no memberships, no free ebook. Just tons of great lessons :)

To get help with this lesson (and for further info and tabs), find the Lesson ID in the video title (like ST-667 or whatever) and then look it up on the Lesson Index page of justinguitar.com

http://www.justinguitar.com

Have fun :)

.

Hello, how you doing? Justin here again.

Uhm, I want to share with you a little

cool technique called rolling today.

Uhm, one of the biggest problems we have

on guitar is if we get two notes that are

in the same fret, but on different strings

It can be quite hard to negotiate your

fingers to get from one to the other

quickly and smoothly

So there's this little technique called

rolling that I want to show you.

Now, to really, we're going to use the

A minor pentatonic scale to practice it.

But, I need to show you the technique up

nice and close so you can see exactly

what's going on.

Uhm, it's a little bit of a weird one.

Uhm, but well worth it spending a little

bit of time practicing it.

Again, you shouldn't have to practice

this forever, but if you give it a few

weeks, you know if you're doing 5 minutes

a day or whatever, give it a few weeks and

you should sort it out.

Don't go mad not being able to perfect it,

just get the basic technique together, and

then as you're learning songs that use it

make sure that you're rolling the right

way.

It's particularly useful for a lot of the

arpeggios when you start learning like A7

and D7 arpeggios or whatever. You need

to have this rolling technique well sorted

So, let me go to a close up and show you

what I'm talking about.

Let's say we got this note here, and the

next note that we want to play is this

note here.

Which these are both in the 5th fret with

our first finger.

Now, if you're playing that note and you

have to lift your finger off and move it

over to the other string. It takes a

little bit too long.

So, what we have to learn how to do is do

this. There's only one note being sounded

at a time.

Now, the important part for this is, and

I suggest you learn it this way first with

just one finger.

Put your first finger down, using the tip

of your finger. When you flatten it, or

roll it onto the next string, it's really

important that just here the tip of your

first finger mutes that D string.

So that only the note C is sounding,

which is this one here, the 5th fret.

And when it goes back to the other one,

it rolls onto the tip and now the third

string is muted, so what I'm going to do

now, you won't see my picking hand, I'm

actually picking both the D string and the

G string at the same time.

The two center strings.

And you'll...

See the way it rolls from one to the other

and then it rolls over like that and you

can see the tip of the finger is now

muting that D string, and now the

underneath of the first finger is muting

that other string. Let me get a better

angle on that. That's better.

Ok, so you can see here from the first

finger, when it rolls over, you can see

that the fourth string is actually up and

then the third string is down, so you can

And it works, of course, just as well for

the third finger. If we do the third

finger there. (Plays notes)

And here we are for the exercise.

So what we are going to be doing is

starting here with the first finger and

then roll it onto the next string.

Same fret. Fifth fret roll onto the fifth

fret. Now the next two notes, the minor

pentatonic scale, roll on different frets.

So you don't have to roll on that one, but

then the next two strings you do.

And the next two, third finger, roll

point, roll it flat, point roll it flat,

point, roll it flat, the next two are on

separate frets.

Point.

Flat.

Point.

Flat.

And they're exactly the same thing

backwards.

Flat.

Point

Flat

Point

Flat

Point

Don't need it

Flat

Point

[Plays lick]

Another cool trick, a variation, that you

might want to try is doing this...

I call it rounding it. You go

point

flat

up

up

down

up

down

[Plays guitar]

I hope you had fun with that exercise.

It is quite a good one.

It's a difficult one to explain, even with

the video, I think, but it's all about

getting the difference between the tip of

your finger and then moving it on to the

flat.

I'm sure with just a little bit of

experimentation you'll have success at how

to do it.

It's not that killer difficult, but it's a

real problem when you're trying to get

your pentatonic scales, particularly, have

a lot of notes on the same fret.

It's kind of difficult, but it sounds the

most, this sounds like it.

Loads and loads of little sounds.

[plays bluesy guitar]

Flat, point. That's bending the 7th fret

third string.

And then playing the fifth fret of the

second string onto the 5th fret of the 3rd

string.

Being able to get that movement between

those two strings on the same fret is a

really good idea.

So uhm, have a bit of a play with that.

Check out the tabs on the website, and see

if you can't learn to roll properly.