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
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.