Rolling on Chord Shapes

Here's a little exercise for running through the notes in the key of G major. I like this roll pattern for triplets...

The Inside Forward/Backward Roll

The forward/backard roll (also known as the forward/reverse) is a beautiful roll.

For those not yet aquainted with the forward/backward roll here is one in tablature format...

What a roll! The only trouble I find with old forward/backward as illustrated above is that with certain chords the droning 5th string just doesn't fit.

Solution?

The INSIDE forward backward roll. So named for being played on the inside strings (I'm calling the 5th the outside string). I find it works well for cases where I don't want the 5th string as well as triplets.

Last post I wrote about visualizing in G using chord shapes. Here is an exercise using the chords generated from the G major scale with the right hand playing an inside forward/ backward roll on each...

Visualizing the G Major Scale

There are many ways to visualize fretboard patterns on the neck. If you are familiar with the G major scale on the banjo you have likely learned to play it in single string style...

or melodic style...

One technique I find useful for visualizing all of the notes in the G major scale all the way up the fretboard is to look at the chords generated by the scale. Begin with the open G and move each string up to one note note in the G scale.

Here is an example using a TITM roll on each of the chords...

This gives you all of the notes in your G major scale up to the 12th fret.

I have found it can also be useful to break this method down to adjacent string pairs...

Finally here is the idea hooked up with some rolling...