The Forward Roll & Slide

To play new licks I tried to come up with different ways of picking the strings. By looking at things separately, I can show you how to put little moves together to make up more complex ones. We take a forward roll and add a slide. We pick a string with the thumb and then the bar slides one half step. The first finger and second finger then continue on with the roll.

We see above our four movements that we are working with. The first is the forward roll. The second takes the first movement of the roll and adds a slide to that move. This is the simplest right hand move combined with the simplest left hand move. We then practice the slide after picking the string with our first finger, and then with our second finger. Each slide is a simple one fret move. You should also remember that you could use any distance for the left hand move. Always remeber to think about the possibilites.

Now that we've worked on all of the parts individually, lets put them together and make a movement. The first move is a slide on the thumb.

The next move is a forward roll with a slide on the first finger.

This is a forward roll with the slide on the second finger. If your still not sure what you're seeing study the six basic rolls.

These are the basic moves of the forward roll and the slide. Notice that one goes up the fretboard and the other goes down. Each of these movements need to be learned separately by the left hand. The left hand has to learn that there is a small difference between each half-step move on your pedal steel guitar. To take this to the next level look at basic rolls & slides.