Etude Project: One Handed Rolls

Greetings! I have a feeling that 2011 is going to bring many more posts, videos, projects, and of course performances. January is already pretty packed with assemblies and concerts. But, the purpose of this post is to begin my new etude project with The Collaborative Process’ Brian Van Winkle. If you haven’t read before, Brian became interested in writing a set (or two) of etudes for the marimba. He asked me to help by sending him concepts for each etude, and later we will organize them. For my first post, I decided to approach one handed rolls. Leave any comments for Brian to read; although if I think they’re bogus I will delete them!

Here was my first e-mail to Brian...

I was thinking that there could be two etudes focused on one handed rolls: one beginner/intermediate, the other advanced. I won’t tell you what to compose timbrely, however it would be nice if the first was a little on the slower side.

For the first etude my suggestion would be to only use the following intervals for the one handed rolls: 5ths through octaves. When the interval is smaller it is more challenging, and usually requires a much faster speed; whereas further than an octave would be too much of a mallet spread for a beginning to intermediate percussionist. While one hand is executing a one handed roll, I would suggestion something articulated in the other hand. This could also allow this etude to work on hand to hand independence. I would probably suggest that for beginners the one handed rolls only change pitches if there is a break in the roll.

I have a few more ideas for the advanced etude. First of all, feel free to use smaller intervals, and to use larger intervals (especially in the right hand). Also, it would be great if at some point you could even have the right hand rolling on one note while the left hand plays something articulated below.

Here’s another idea. Some percussionists don’t think about speeding up and slowing down their roll speeds with one handed rolls. So, you could write a few Malsanka-esque accels into roll, and rit. into niente… or something like that. You could also try a right handed roll being joined after a while by the left hand, so a one handed roll blending into a four mallet ripple roll. Let me know with this paragraph if you need a few visual examples.

Looking at this now, those two paragraphs have a lot of ideas. So, if it makes it easier to split into two etudes, feel free to go down that route. We could also include a few other etude ideas into splitting the etudes.