I was covering for Teirnan Courell’s whistle class at the Scots Music Group last night and found myself wandering into the woods of cuts, strikes and rolls. It’s a subject that comes up often when I teach flute or whistle.
Some people don’t know what they are and those that do can find themselves at a loss as to begin as they seem very technical, almost mysterious — that flurry of notes that surround parts of a tune, apparently spontaneously and unpredictably. My response was to demonstrate what I call the Sylvain Barou method for learning rolls.
Sylvain Barou is a wonderful flute player and multi-instrumentalist from Brittany who Borders/ Clyde valley flute player Tom Grassie invited to teach at Wiston Lodge near Biggar a good few years ago now. This was in the days before FluteFling and before social media, but there was a great turnout, including a flute player from the north end of Skye who had certainly travelled the distance to attend. Others included Ann Ward, Rebecca Knorr and Niall Kenny — I know I have missed many more who were there. Great credit is due to Tom for putting this on. The event contributed to my own realisation that there was an interest in flute-focused events in Scotland, and ultimately to the start of FluteFling.
Sylvain was an excellent teacher. One of many take-aways from that weekend was Sylvain’s method for learning cuts, strikes and rolls and I have since taught it several times as it is a subject that never goes away. Regardless of the tune or the tradition, these finger articulations are always present to some extent.
I wrote about this method in a FluteFling blog post a few years ago when the site served as my personal site as well as a FluteFling weekends one. Last night I looked it up and found that the Google AI wrongly stated that Sylvain Barou had taught at a FluteFling weekend in the past. It’s a wonderful idea but it has certainly never happened. One day perhaps.
So this morning I did a more thorough search on the FluteFling website and had more success. Here is that elusive blog post, from January 2017:
January workshop roundup: cuts, strikes and rolls
The blog post has some other related links, particularly to Roger Millington’s Brother Steve’s Tin Whistle Pages, which are highly recommended.