Home > Rolls or roulements

Rolls or roulements

Solo playing is not something that magically happens at some point, you do not get inspired, wave your hands and wow, this cool solo just comes out... No, solo playing is the result of doing your homework, practicing,and lots of trial and error!

Once you are more comfortable with playing traditional solo's and solo's built out of predefined patterns, you can try to move to more free-form solo's. There are two basic techniques that are linked to each other, and that I use extensively, and they are the roulement and the ability to play left-handed.

Rolls or roulements
A roll or roulement or double-strike is simply playing two equal short notes instead of one longer one. Take this basic part:

Note: If you see things like 4b.tt4..s. then you must install the Yankadi font in order to see the music!

and change the first tone into a roulement:
 

In this example, one phrase with a roulement and one straight phrase S arealternating. Note that the first tone becomes two (short fast) tones, the old second tone (now the third) is again exactly on the pulse. Once you can play looser or play faster, the three tones will move towards a triplet, which is three notes of even duration, as opposed to two short tones and one long tone as is the case here.

Left hand playing
If you play a roulement as above, you wil play it right-left-right, which leaves your left hand free for the slap on the first beat again. (If you are left-handed, reverse all lefts and rights in this text).
Hey! I'm playing left handed! Or rather, youwill have to learn to play left handed, because most people will fumble as soon as a main beat must be played with the left hand, and your solo then stops! Fortunately, part S has a large pause after the first beat during which you can switch hands again. Other rhythms are not so easy!

Solo on S

This solo is created by using variations of the basic part S. It includes roulements too but the essence is variations on pattern S, and it comes back to that basic pattern from time to time. The full solo is presented here as a study project:

Solo's are interesting because they are often played across the beat rather than on it. The above solo has such patterns too. Take special notice of the last line. The first bar contains a roll on the tones that starts on the offbeat and ends on the main beat. The next bar has a roll on the tones that starts on the main beat and ends on the off beat.Practice small sections like this!

How to practice
Remember that nobody can play solo's like this just by waving a magic wand. Everyone practices and practices until they see blue in the face, until they know their "alphabet" of small patterns. Create your own patterns. Start with a simple part, like S, and make variations. Learn to string them together. And work on the distinction between yourtone and slap. Work work work, practice practice practice!

One way to practice is to sing patterrns to yourself whilst you walk or ride a bike, when you have a slow steady beat in your feet. You can also sit down with a pen and paper, and try to create new patterns on paper first, and then try to play them. It doesn't matter if they are not traditional. They will become part of your djembe vocabulary. As long as they are pleasing to you!

And when you have created a solo on S for yourself, go to the basic rhythms page and select another rhythm. Create variations on that, and build a solo on it. Study traditional solo's too, and see how they use small variations on basic patterns.