Gonzalo's rhythm

Jazzaferri

Perhaps the idea of a good rhythm player might include the ability to play any style of rhythm the song/lead/singer etc wants. From crunchy crunchy dry, to wet light to heavy and in between.

Just a thought mind

Passacaglia

the ability to play any style of rhythm the song/lead/singer etc wants.

Nothing like saying a ton with fewer words, as opposed to saying very little, with a surfeit of those weird little lines on a page. Perfect, Jay.

dennis

wow old thread!! well i am the producer of those gonzalo videos; it's titled "in the style of gonzalo" so of course, i left it up to him to teach HIS specific way of playing..

as some of you know, i've had the amazing opportunity to hang out with an insane amount of Sinti musicians in France, Germany, Holland, Belgium ; famous and non-famous alike, so I've been lucky to really "live" it so to speak. I agree iwth Mitch that I don't know any gypsy player who plays rhythm gonzalo's way; but it is his way, and that's the way he seems to like it, so obviously it is his own creation and therefore valid. I know that a lot of american players are following him in that direction. I know he taught his rhythm player Jeff to play that way as well.

I'll admit that, on a personal level, I prefer the gypsy way, maybe because i ve spent too much time with them, that i have trouble hearing rhythm played any other way (and even then, there are so many variations within the gypsy way)

i also know that gonzalo wanted to emulate hono's rhythm (whom I also know personally), it is actually not the same as how gonzalo describes it. On many recordings, because of the way the instruments are sometimes mixed, it sounds as if the 2 and 4 are choked which is how I think gonzalo came up with the idea of doing it that way, and ended up with something different. I know that he (gonzo) once mentioned late django sounding like that; and if you listen to the recordings, it does almost sound muted (the recording technology back then, being what it was) . However, if you listen to specific recordings, or if you really pay attention, you will hear that it is not:

skip to 2:01 and you can hear django playing straight on rhythm, the 2 and 4 is not muted



this is very similar to the dorado and young sons style (bronson ,amati) of playing rhythm:



i think that's the sound gonzalo was originally going for.

I recorded a little demonstration of it here a while back:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TvgGn6JF ... dfHZdq8mSg

it is especially clear in this recording of minor blues (skip the guitar solo)



Here is how hono plays standard gypsy rhythm



you will notice that it's very different from what dorado does.. Yet both are from the same region (lorraine close to the german border); which is why I don't believe in the myth of "regional differences". To me there is the upstroke style and the downstroke style that is not limited to any region but to personal preference... Within these two schools, there are many variations as well...

Another example is herve gaguenetti and ritary gaguenetti. They are both cousins, and they both learned from Ritary's father; yet their rhythm playing is way different


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MhR1W8mS87Y

while we're at it, as far as the 2 and 4 muted thing goes, the closest i ever heard of 2 and 4 being muted is maybe herve gaguenetti, but even then, i know it's not hundred percent muted



there, i hope that clears certain things !

Jazzaferri

Great post Dennis.

AmundLauritzen

The most important thing is that it swings, and Gonzalos rhythm certainly does that!

I think it is a good thing that rhythm players have different styles as long as it works well and always supports the soloist and doesn't stray too far from how Joseph played(for swing rhythm). If we were to absolutely strictly follow what Django and Joseph did we wouldn't have the bossa rhythm. Bossa Dorado and For Sephora would not be possible. Kind of a side point, but valid nevertheless. From what I've gathered, Gonzalo seems to be a strong believer in keeping it simple and not doing all those rhythm fills all the time, and I absolutely agree with it. When the rhythm is straight and even, the soloist can feel safe to experiment rhythmically. If Hono threw fills all over the place, it wouldn't sound good when Bireli does his crazy temporarily-out-of-tempo tricks and then locks back in perfectly(don't know a better way to describe that).

Even from the Netherlands to France there are subtle differences not only in the rhythm and accents themselves, but also voicings to a certain degree(and use of passing chords etcetra).

I'm certainly no expert, but these are my observations so far.

Passacaglia

AmundLauritzen wrote:

Gonzalo seems to be a strong believer in keeping it simple and not doing all those rhythm fills all the time, and I absolutely agree with it. When the rhythm is straight and even, the soloist can feel safe to experiment rhythmically. If Hono threw fills all over the place, it wouldn't sound good when Bireli does his crazy temporarily-out-of-tempo tricks and then locks back in perfectly(don't know a better way to describe that).

Forgive a relative noob's comment, and I think you're really saying the same thing, but just to be clear, I don't think it's a question between keeping it simple or not -one of the strongest takeaways I got from Denis's Hono material, is that Hono is quite strong on the point of keeping it simple. "Straight, sweet, and square," leaving the "crazy drummer" stuff out, and leaving whatever flourishes to be had, to the soloist. I think the question is one of how much the chords are voiced, or not. I don't hear a voice in Gonzalo's beats 2, 4, and I definitively do in Hono, and everyone from this "corridor."

Bones

I hear a lot of newbs (me included) with way too much ringing in the 2 and 4 and also the 2 and 4 being too strong. I think it's really easy for newbs to get all excited and overplay (personal experience).

I think Gonzalo only teaches the totally muted 2 and 4 to beginners to break that habit. And also, it sounds better to have no tone on the 2 and 4 rather than too much ringing if you have to have one or the other temporarily while you figure it out.

How much tone is sounded on 2 and 4 is very subtle and personal preference. It sounds like the good news is there is all kinds of room for variation as long as it 'sounds good' do it???

And don't forget the metronome....

dennis

Bones wrote:

I hear a lot of newbs (me included) with way too much ringing in the 2 and 4 and also the 2 and 4 being too strong. I think it's really easy for newbs to get all excited and overplay (personal experience).

actually in my experience, it's quite the opposite that i often encounter.. I see a lot of people muting the strings on the 2 and 4; but you are right, in the instances where they do make the second beat ring, they play it abrasively too loud

the problem is that it's sort of like a language; or even more specifically, an accent; most people who are not native speakers of a language are unable to discern these subtleties. I grew up going to French schools my entire life until university under the French (France) system in Quebec, a province where the French is completely different. Quebecois French, and French French don't always understand eachother (i've had to tranlsate before). I also grew up in speaking an Asian language iwth tons of tones. My father spoke 7 languages, 4 of them European and I also learned to speak English by watching TV and movies. What I'm trying to say is, I grew up with sounds, and I got really good at discerning tonal differences in languages, a skill that was really useful for me when learning to play this style.

I think the rhythm guitar aspect is very much the same; there are tons of micro subtleties that are very easy to overlook. As I mentioned rpeviously, over the past 10+ years, I ve been very lucky to have the opportunity spend significant time with a lot of gypsy players from all over france, germany ,belgium, and holland, pretty much the four countries of gypsy jazz. I can write a whole freakin book about my experiences but i'l ltry to keep it concise here. THe point i'm trying to make is that I befriended not only the players that people know but also the lesser known ones, who sometimes weren't actually good musicians. Some of them played the wrong chords ; one guy's idea of nuages was to loop the first 4 bars over and over again; another dude switched chords when he felt ready to switch (which kept the soloist guessing hahaha), etc... YET every single one of these players HAD the "accent".. The typical "gypsy" sound. I would very much rather play with someone who muted the 2 and 4 but kept things groovin' than a guy who had perfect sound but had zero musicianship haha

I'm a very open minded and neutral person , and I don't really think in terms of right vs wrong. Of course, I do have preferences as mentioned earlier, but the discussion is about how Django, and the gypsies have approached rhythm. Something that's fairly objective and quantifiable. Of all the players I know, I don't know one gypsy who mutes the 2 and 4; like I said the closest I can think of is Herve Gaguenetti or Billy Weiss but even then, they still let the chord ring out a tiny bit.

Basically Gonzalo created a new style of rhythm playing (he's not the first non-gypsy to do it that way though), I suppose in some ways it was based on how he perceived the gypsies were actually doing it. He seems to really like it that way; and he teaches it that way too; so I guess we now have the American (Argentinian??) pompe haha. Anyway, I'm certainly not knocking it, it's really become a style of its own, but historically speaking, it is not the way that it was done by Django and his rhythm players, and pretty much all gypsy players after him... It boils down to personal taste in the end.

What I kinda wanted to say, and it's not easy to say (Mitch seemed to have no difficulty saying it though haha) is that given the fact that very few people are able to discern these micro subtleties, there are tons of players teaching what they perceive to be the actual gypsy way, when in fact they're teaching it quite wrong. I've seen tons of youtube tutorials, the only ones off the top of my head that were actually teaching it right were Samy Daussat, Romane, Daniel Givone, and maybe a few others.. All guys who, while being non-gypsies, were surrounded by the top players and assimiliated the "accent". I know it's a bit of a cocky thing for me to say but like I said, the rhythm aspect of GJ is something that I have studied like a madman... and well, while I've never really publicly revealed this,the first time I befriended many of these gypsy players, the one thing that they always told me was that I played like a "gypsy"; whether in France, Germany, or Holland, that was the one comment I always got... Again, I'm not saying the gypsies play it better and that it is the only way to do it, but my obsession with this started at the very beginning. Within a week of starting GJ, I was hanging out with a friend who had been playing the style a few years longer than me; and he said something that stuck with me til this day. He said: "you know, you and me, we're not gypsies, we'll never be able to play it like they do".. He was refering to the sound and the subtleties, he wasn't implying that gypsies were automatically better players... it kinda got me thinking... Why can't we play it like they do , why can't we get these subtleties, and that's really what set me off on trying to figure this great big mystery out..

I really managed to discover tons of stuff that sometimes even the players themselves were not aware of... Stochelo was not aware that he was playing a particular lick with a specific picking pattern, in fact he didn't believe me when I told him he was doing it x way, and then I told him to look at his right hand, he tried it again, and then he looked back at me with a "holy shit" expression, saying "you're right, I do play it like that".

Hono himself wasn't exactly sure how he did his rhythm so I had to break it down for him , you can see parts of it in this video:



For a lot of these players, it was just a very natural thing. For me, being all the way in Canada, being away from all the good players (except the times when I would be spending time with them), the only way to really get this down, was to go apeshit analyzing every single micro movement.

I realize what a lot of what I wrote makes me sound pompous, but there was really no other way to say it haha. i guess so be it... mitch unleashed the asshole bitch within me , maybe I can finally fit in with parisian society The intention wasn't to say i'm better than anyone though, but this was the only way to explain some of thre misconceptions about GJ rhythm...

dennis

Oh ya I wanted to mention one last thing; I've known Mitch ( a dude hwo lives in Paris) for maybe 10 yrs now, he's got the whole sound down . There are tons of players in Paris who have the "sound" but who aren't gypsies; it has to do with the fact that they were surrounded by the best players in the world at the time.., Serge Krief, the Demeter family, the Garcia family, Moreno , Tchavolo, or any other player that was passing through paris..

you have guys who work as security guards in museums who play "authentic" GJ rhythm... There are tons of players that no one knows about outside of paris that have the sound. So it's all about surrounding yourself with the real deal, a luxury that very few people can afford. I was lucky to speak a bit of German, and fluent French, and it helped that I had family in Europe, so it wasn't so bad for me

arjr

Interesting topic!!!!




Angelo