Do You Roll The Bar, Slide The Bar Or A Little Of Both?

[Chris Templeton]

Do you roll the bar, slide the bar or a little of both, when you play?
(I tried to make this a poll, but don't know how. (I tried the "Make a poll" but wasn't successful)

[Donny Hinson]

I do both. I normally roll on the slower stuff, and slide (the "Drake shivver") on the faster stuff.

[Richard Sinkler]

Both

[John McClung]

Both. Mostly "wiggle" the bar front end. When I think of it, on my extended E9 I roll on the wide grips getting down into the lowest strings.

[Ian Rae]

I'm a "wiggler". I guess it's because my first instrument is trombone where there's no equivalent of a roll. Also mostly moving the tip varies the top note the most - in a trombone section the lead player does most of the vibrato.

[Larry Dering]

Both. Depending on the effect I'm trying to get.

[Bob Carlucci]

Both, but its maybe 60% roll, 40% wiggle...
I tend to roll more on slower and mid speed stuff..

[Paul Sutherland]

I really don't think about this as I play. I focus on intonation and trying to limit the amount of vibrato. In my opinion most people, including me, use too much vibrato.

If I really think about my playing, I probably slide the bar more than roll it.

[Larry Bressington]

I'm a slider but sometimes i'll let the good times roll...

[Jeff Neal]

I started as a Dobro player. Most everything was fast so I developed a fast bar "quiver". As I got in to pedal steel I watched people like Paul Franklin and Lloyd Green and Tommy White and soon came to realize I needed to slow down a bit on my vibrato. For lack of better terms you want to pull tone out of your bar on a steel. When I video myself playing I still find that sometimes I have too fast of a vibrato that makes me sound to me like a lap steel or Reso player. So Listen to the song and Slow Down and think about moving from your elbow rather than your fingers or wrist.

[Dave Mudgett]

Since the OP Chris said he wanted a poll with this, I added one.

Coming from guitar, and especially slide guitar, of course I started out strictly sliding the bar, and I still do that sometimes. It's a specific sound. Actually, sometimes I really like the sound of the slide or bar sliding back and forth across the strings.

But when I joined the forum, I noted that many players talked about rolling the bar. So I tried it and sometimes that seems to fit better to me, so I've worked on doing that more. I guess I also tend to do that more on slow stuff where sliding might sound too exaggerated.

I also occasionally successively push down and then let up on the bar, analogous to what I sometimes do with my fingers for a different type of vibrato on guitar. I think that's more of a violin technique.

[Dale Rottacker]

Depending on the desired effect, I do both at different times.

[J Fletcher]

Vibrato is something I have been thinking about lately. Very seldom , if ever do I hear of specific exercises that address the technique. It usually seems to be an afterthought . There are lots of right hand exercises, and bar hand exercises that deal with moving the bar accurately, but can't recall hearing about how people work on their vibrato . Well maybe once .

[Brett Day]

I do both, and it also depends on the song-I like vibrato in slow songs, but there are times I'll use vibrato on fast songs.

[Rocky Evangelisti]

I do both as well.

[Pete McAvity]

Bofa

[Charley Paul]

Paul Franklin talks about rolling the bar in his Method series. He calls sliding it “the wave” and says it is a bad habit to get into.

Personally, I like the sound of the roll better, but I have to force myself to roll, not wave. It’s not a natural motion, yet. Still workin on it!

[Pete McAvity]

Thanks Charlie. I’m gonna have to revisit that part in the Franklin Method (which is one of the great things about it- you can review whenever). I think Paul refers to “the wave” as changing the angle of the wrist so the bar changes angle & doesn’t remain parallel to the fret markers, causing intonation funkiness. Thanks for the heads up- I gotta go back!

[Tom Vollmer]

I have tried the roll after sliding for years and as far as my playing I can see no difference in the sound. If you really want to know try playing a song and have another steeler in the next room
and play the same song with each method and see if he or she can hear any difference. That would be a way of telling
a difference if any instead of asking opinions.

[J D Sauser]

"rolling" seemed to me to be the logical thing to do years ago, until I observed that Byrd, Emmons and many of the Tone-"Monsters" tended to rather slide the bar for vibrato.
I must say it only got me to experiment and I find that I can drive, push, or milk the tone better by "sliding" back and forth for vibrato. I still think that logic would suggest friction from sliding instead of rolling, but then, that MAY rather excite the string.

... J-D.

[Garry Vanderlinde]

I heard the late, great Jerry Byrd explain vibrato this way on an instruction video I think and it helped me.

Jerry Byrd,

"vibrato should be natural, (imagine) this bar was a pencil and you were erasing a spot off of that string".

...easy to visually and manually identify with.

[Dan Robinson]

I roll the bar on slow passages and chords. I slide the bar when playing single nore runs, especially on runs that make minimal use of pedals/knees. Not sure why... just seemns to work for me.

[Bill Duncan]

I do both and try to match vibrato to the tempo somewhat.vibrato and amp tremolo, although different can be overdone and like overdone food, become less appealing.