Gypsy Jazz needs more musicians and less soldiers. (Adrien Moignard)
A little update on my going along my Gypsy Jazz quest; I enrolled in two wonderfull online Gypsy Jazz courses: http://www.gypsyjazzacademy.com/ and http://www.rosenbergacademy.com/ Both of them help me make loads of progress due to the clear interfaces and wonderfull interaction with teachers like: Fapy Lafertin, Lollo Meier and of course Stochelo Rosenberg. Theire lessons (and those of my personal real life teacher Thomas Baggerman and jam buddy Frédéric Zolnet) combined with feedback from fellow students finaly made me realize a great but yet simple point: Start with an relatively easy song and play it untill it's absolutely right.
So I got rid of all the finger breaking solos and started on a low-tempo version of Nuages I found in Samy Daussat's book: Astuces de la guitare Manouche vol. 2 and I started practicing on vibrato, timing, pronounciation of the notes, slides, bends and hammer on's (but not after I got the rythm section right). Then I watched and listened to recordings by Stochelo and Fapy and combined some of theire ideas into my own little intro.....This video is what I came up with so far, it still needs work but I have to get going on my rythm practice so I can try to play along a little at Samois this year. Hope you like it!
Click to read entire weblog!
Posts tonen met het label Practicing...practicing. Alle posts tonen
Posts tonen met het label Practicing...practicing. Alle posts tonen
woensdag 16 februari 2011
maandag 3 mei 2010
Work in progress : MINOR SWING
Yeah, I know, but I just couldn't help myself....
Aldough I now really understand the importance of good technique, and taking it slow at first, I could not help myself recording my efforts on "Minor Swing" that I was working on for some time now. It is a way to celebrate my first six monts of guitar playing I think. Anyway, I won't play Minor Swing for awhile, It's now back to Gypsy Picking technique and rhythm practice.
Click to read entire weblog!
Aldough I now really understand the importance of good technique, and taking it slow at first, I could not help myself recording my efforts on "Minor Swing" that I was working on for some time now. It is a way to celebrate my first six monts of guitar playing I think. Anyway, I won't play Minor Swing for awhile, It's now back to Gypsy Picking technique and rhythm practice.
Click to read entire weblog!
vrijdag 30 april 2010
How to learn to play Gypsy Jazz.
Learning to learn...
So I have been practicing for awhile now, and some problems arise. It's not hard to find Gypsy Jazz lesson resources on the internet, and so I found myself with a great collection of studybooks, DVD's, online Howto's and Guitar Pro files stacked up in front of me and I started to lose track. Where to start?
A selection of my Gypsy Jazz studybooks
According to my teacher Thomas the answer was; Technique!The key to good Gypsy Jazz playing absolutely lies in the technique that differs completely from other guitar styles. First there's the right wrist angle needed to free the top of the guitar and allow it to produce as much sound as possible (the nature of this lies in the fact that Django Reinhardt used to be a banjo player, when he switched to the guitar as a jazz instrument he needed the produce as much volume as possible to be heard in the ensemble since electric guitars were not yet invented.) And then there's the swept picking style that gives all the character to Gypsy Jazz, the pick is used to hammer on the strings a bit like its done inside a piano, this is also for volume purposes. A good control of your right hand or "La Plume" (the feather) as it's called is absolutely unbearable in the genre and a much discussed skill in the Gypsy Jazz scene.
The other important thing to realize are the typical chord shapes en the vertical descent during scales and arpeggios on the guitar neck. A lot of these unique techniques come straight from the fact that Django, due to a fire that burned his caravan, only had two functioning fingers on his left hand. When you look well at Gypsy Jazz fingerings and remenber this fact, it will help you understand how the music works.
Django Reinhardt and his two finger technique
Back to the study material;
Knowing this now, and talking to my teacher about it he recommended two useful resources: Michael Horrowitz's Gypsy Picking and Denis Chang's the art of accompaniment. I myself would add Samy Daussat's Swing Manouche Super Debutant (only available in French) because it has some very easy to play but very characteristic tunes in it.
A tune from Samy Daussat's book.
This is for me the base I use to learn to play Gypsy Jazz. Wrong technique (so I've been told) can take years to be corrected again, and I really would like to avoid this.
So it was back to square one for me, the few months I had been practicing were not all lost but I had to leave my "Minor Swing" solo practice to play open string exercises. This might seem a little boring at first, but after a few weeks sweep picking was almost natural to me. Even when trying to play some easy Nirvana tunes I had practiced when first playing the guitar I found myself doing it in the Gypsy Jazz sweep picking style automaticly.
Others might say that in the real Gypsy Jazz tradition learning to play good rhythm is the first thing you do, and of course good rhythm playing techniques are very important and you should use a great deal of your practice time playing along rhythm sessions to your favourite Django recordings. But I don't see why you shouldn't learn soloing and rhythm at the same time. Important is to get good at both.
Conclusion: I find that good Gypsy Jazz playing starts with good technique, a little like the "wax on, wax of" story in the old karate kid movies; it might seem boring and useless at first, but will payoff loads when you finally get to realy play.
Click to read entire weblog!
See the trailer of the new documentary about Gypsy Jazz I'm making!
So I have been practicing for awhile now, and some problems arise. It's not hard to find Gypsy Jazz lesson resources on the internet, and so I found myself with a great collection of studybooks, DVD's, online Howto's and Guitar Pro files stacked up in front of me and I started to lose track. Where to start?
A selection of my Gypsy Jazz studybooks
According to my teacher Thomas the answer was; Technique!The key to good Gypsy Jazz playing absolutely lies in the technique that differs completely from other guitar styles. First there's the right wrist angle needed to free the top of the guitar and allow it to produce as much sound as possible (the nature of this lies in the fact that Django Reinhardt used to be a banjo player, when he switched to the guitar as a jazz instrument he needed the produce as much volume as possible to be heard in the ensemble since electric guitars were not yet invented.) And then there's the swept picking style that gives all the character to Gypsy Jazz, the pick is used to hammer on the strings a bit like its done inside a piano, this is also for volume purposes. A good control of your right hand or "La Plume" (the feather) as it's called is absolutely unbearable in the genre and a much discussed skill in the Gypsy Jazz scene.
The other important thing to realize are the typical chord shapes en the vertical descent during scales and arpeggios on the guitar neck. A lot of these unique techniques come straight from the fact that Django, due to a fire that burned his caravan, only had two functioning fingers on his left hand. When you look well at Gypsy Jazz fingerings and remenber this fact, it will help you understand how the music works.
Django Reinhardt and his two finger technique
Back to the study material;
Knowing this now, and talking to my teacher about it he recommended two useful resources: Michael Horrowitz's Gypsy Picking and Denis Chang's the art of accompaniment. I myself would add Samy Daussat's Swing Manouche Super Debutant (only available in French) because it has some very easy to play but very characteristic tunes in it.
A tune from Samy Daussat's book.
This is for me the base I use to learn to play Gypsy Jazz. Wrong technique (so I've been told) can take years to be corrected again, and I really would like to avoid this.
So it was back to square one for me, the few months I had been practicing were not all lost but I had to leave my "Minor Swing" solo practice to play open string exercises. This might seem a little boring at first, but after a few weeks sweep picking was almost natural to me. Even when trying to play some easy Nirvana tunes I had practiced when first playing the guitar I found myself doing it in the Gypsy Jazz sweep picking style automaticly.
Others might say that in the real Gypsy Jazz tradition learning to play good rhythm is the first thing you do, and of course good rhythm playing techniques are very important and you should use a great deal of your practice time playing along rhythm sessions to your favourite Django recordings. But I don't see why you shouldn't learn soloing and rhythm at the same time. Important is to get good at both.
Conclusion: I find that good Gypsy Jazz playing starts with good technique, a little like the "wax on, wax of" story in the old karate kid movies; it might seem boring and useless at first, but will payoff loads when you finally get to realy play.
Click to read entire weblog!
See the trailer of the new documentary about Gypsy Jazz I'm making!
donderdag 8 april 2010
Latcho Niglo
Six months now since I first started playing guitar. Here I practice on a little traditional tune called "Latcho Niglo" from Samy Daussat's book: "Swing Manouche pour super debutant". It will be the last chorus like piece for a while since I now really understand the importance of good basic technique and rhythm playing, so I will now focus on that for the time being! (I promiss)
And a brilliant version by my friend Frédéric:
Click to read entire weblog!
And a brilliant version by my friend Frédéric:
Click to read entire weblog!
maandag 25 januari 2010
One, two, three, one, two, three....
My first steps;
Three monts now since I first picked up my Gypsy Jazz guitar. I still practice alot on "Montagne St. Genevieve" as played by Romane. I.m not even half way the speed it should be, but I'm happy to be able to play it somewhat decently allready. I wonder how I will look back on this a year from now...
Click to read entire weblog!
Three monts now since I first picked up my Gypsy Jazz guitar. I still practice alot on "Montagne St. Genevieve" as played by Romane. I.m not even half way the speed it should be, but I'm happy to be able to play it somewhat decently allready. I wonder how I will look back on this a year from now...
Click to read entire weblog!
donderdag 12 november 2009
Montagne St. Geneviéve....
Starting my first project;
Started practicing on Montagne St. Geneviéve as played by Romane today. Seems to me a great piece to start with since it is quite easy to remember and has this impresive diagonal covering the whole of the guitars neck.....
See how Romane does his version:
Click to read entire weblog!
Started practicing on Montagne St. Geneviéve as played by Romane today. Seems to me a great piece to start with since it is quite easy to remember and has this impresive diagonal covering the whole of the guitars neck.....
See how Romane does his version:
Click to read entire weblog!
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