Gypsy improvisation

Charles Meadows

I would love to hear some opinions on this one. I have always been a better duplicator than an improviser so this sort of thing interests me.

When improvising over a tune do the GJ guys (Stochelo, Angelo, etc) tend to think in terms of the melody primarily? Maybe as opposed to the chords? Perhaps their mind would be saying, "here's how R-vingt 6 six feels", as opposed to, "Ok now a measure of G, then a measure of G# diminished, etc"?

I am particularly interested to hear what Dennis would say since he has spent so much time with the actual players.

Thanks

kevingcox

Since you mentioned Dennis by name, I can pretty much assure you that he at least is acutely aware of which chord he is playing over at all times. Tcha always seemed to be as well. These guys are both super educated in music, however.

If I remember correctly, there was a time when Stochelo pretty much made it clear that he had no idea what chords he was playing over (at least in the sense of being within western theory). I think he would still need some sort of internalized "private language" of harmonic structure, but whether he would be able to explain it or even be aware of it I don't know. I could also be remembering incorrectly.

Charles Meadows

Good point Kevin.

I figure they all have some conception of how chords and scales relate, whether it's formal "music theory" or something more intuitive.

I was thinking more of how much that conception relates to what they play. How concerned is Stochelo that that a given lick "fits" over a chord? Or just he just play what he hears in his head?

dennis

well, first of all, everyone's different and will have varying degrees of success but, by and large, most gypsies rely on their sense of observation and intuition to learn how to play music. They basically pick up the guitar and watch / listen to what others do and try to imitate and hope to somehow succeed... Unfortunately, a fair number fail, but some succeed, and those who succeed become the players we all know.

So they figure stuff out by ear, and over the years, it's just assimilated vocabulary/language, and they know intuitively how certain things work without being able to explain it.

And from this pool of players, some eventually have a much higher understanding of things (ie Tcha), and some less. Some end up having good ears and can manipulate some of the licks to come up with something original or something resembling "true improvisation" (i'd say stochelo is really quite good at this; he has incredible musical reflexes); others are unable to do anything other than to rehash licks.

Behind all this is shitloads of practice!!!

Charles Meadows

Thanks Denis.

Would you say that Stochelo is one of those guys who can immediately translate what's in his head to his fingers?

I guess I would have to say that Angelo is far and away my favorite. And it's like the swing just flows from his fingers, spontaneously. To play that way that fast it (Stochelo and Bireli too) would almost seem that he would have to be just translating what's in his head melodically.

Just curious. In past years when I played metal, bluegrass flatpicking, and Nashville style chicken picking I reached a decent level of ability to play a lot of the fast parts. But for the life of me I could not improvise beyond the simplest stuff. So improve skill is an elusive gem to me...

dennis

Stochelo and I had to accompany a singer once , and she had all these word songs that stochelo was not familiar with, i showed him the chords (she had the lead sheet), he memorized them and played great on them. His solos were typical stochelo style phrases, but i wouldn't say they were just random licks strung together, there was a sort of coherence in them that shows that he knew what was going on...

On another more difficult song (well not difficult but the changes were not the typical gypsy jazz changes) that he was completely unfamilar with, he relied on visual cues by watching my fingers play the chords, and he would react to each chord , he did it very beautifully.

The key thing is to constantly rely on your instincts and ears , the more you do it the faster your musical reflexes and the more you hear things in your head. That time that I played with Stochelo was very clear proof of that. The more you work on it the better you get at it, and that combined with lots of practice results in players like angelo debarre.

Wes Montgomery (and lots of great musicians too) learned music that way too, just by figuring out stuff and listening a lot..

it's a bit intimidating to train the ears and build observation skills , especially for people who have already reached a certain level of technical instrumental mastery , because it feels like starting from scratch. But i think it's really worth doing, and u can do it without an instrument in your hands.. i do it all the time, when i'm grocery shopping and there's background music, i'm always trying to figure out the harmonies behind (and i usually check with my iphone keyboard to see if i'm right)... you can really do this stuff everywhere ... tcha talks a bit about it in this lesson excerpt



of course i;m nowhere near that level, i've trained my ears differently than he did, and what he did is the best way (by singing all the time), i trained my ears to figure out stuff not to sing (although i do a bit of it)

Passacaglia

Embarrassing to read over dozens of posts stretching back years, now, about intents and approaches to playing lead lines in this music. And amazing to me, how something said with such persuasive force, and steady patience, for years beyond my own hearing, can be heard for the first time.

You're right, Dennis...the written material is like an elixir, though in my gut, I've long known despite every attempt otherwise, there are no Promised Land shortcuts...hardest thing to do is put away the bible-sized folders of collected transcriptions, listen, and plunk it out.

I find this thread, and Dennis's contributions here, one of the most important threads I've read on the forum. Thanks for raising it, Charles, and Dennis, thanks for reiterating it so clearly and so well - and with such patience in the many ways you've told it here, and elsewhere.

Charles Meadows

Great post Dennis!

That really addresses what I was getting at. I'll never be a great improviser, but I want to improve. And at least to my overly analytical mind it helps to see how the really great musicians approach this.

Hemert

I don't know if Stochelo has really good ears, they are certainly good enough to pick out harmonies reasonably fast but I know people who can do that much faster. I know a guy who can literally write down harmonies without making any mistakes while listening to whatever (jazz, classical, Sting) at full speed BUT you don't want to hear him play a jazz solo because even though all the notes fit there's no coherence and certainly no recognizable vocabulary.

Stochelo has a superb knowledge of the guitar neck, gypsy jazz as a style and amazing memory. He is a pure licks player but a superb one. I would say that even though he plays licks most of the time (all the time actually) he can add that something extra which ties it all together to create more than the sum of its parts: lyrical tone, precise timing, technical precision and most of all: great taste.

I started this style on violin after meeting Stochelo in 2006 by transcribing Grappelli solos and studying them note-for-note and mining them for licks following a recommendation by Stochelo ("...you already have the sound, now study some Grappelli solos...").

I have never worked on developing my ears and frankly I've never needed them. I just make sure I know what I'm doing at all times: in the beginning not relying on your ears and only on things you've practiced will make you sound stiff but if you really stick with it there will come a point where you'll find freedom in knowing everything you do and you can start improvising while still sounding coherent and sophisticated.

Usually I can immediately identify people who only rely on their ears for playing: they are either playing lines which are not sophisticated enough to be really interesting for several choruses or have trouble keeping time because they're frantically searching for notes they hear in their head or they're just playing gibberish. Of course not all players, there are exceptions but I'm pretty sure studying licks and developing taste (by listening to the greats) is a safer route than relying on your ears. Most scat solos, which sound nice performed by a human voice, will sound pretty uninteresting on instruments. Especially in gypsy jazz where everyone's waiting for those cool double time licks or blazing arpeggios (scat solos rarely contain arpeggios and certainly not diminished arpeggios which is what gypsy jazz is built around).

So I hold a very controversial opinion and I know I will be scolded for this but here goes: don't waste time training your ears. Instead practice licks and complete solos, know your theory and listen to a lot of great players and develop good taste (or what most people call "musicality").

I know a famous trumpet player here in Holland who has the worst ears I've ever encountered (even having trouble distinguishing between major and minor sometimes). Without knowing the chords beforehand he's nowhere but if you put a chord sheet in front of him (or if he knows the chords) well...let's just say: all other trumpet players can go home and sell their trumpets.

I have bad ears as well and it doesn't bother me one bit. I can still transcribe pretty much everything I hear including full symphony orchestras by just having studied harmony and orchestration...

AmundLauritzen

Good post by Hemert, though I don't think ear training and learning licks have to be mutually exclusive.

If you work on both, the knowledge will "cross over" and you will be better at both.

I knew a fair amount of theory before starting to learn gypsy jazz, and I knew all the keys on the entire fretboard. I also did some ear training earlier where I made lines using specific intervals over chords using embellishments.

All that has proven useful as I've gone on to learn gypsy jazz, because I already had a system of categorization.
I instantly see chord shapes, arpeggios and scale fragments in lines that I learn. So it's assimilated much quicker than if I didn't know all the keys on the fretboard, drop 2 and drop 3 chords etcetra...

I find that the quickest way to learn and to internalize is to relate new knowledge to what I already know. Make some sort of visual "cue" or "trigger" on the fretboard, maybe a chord shape that the line goes over, or an arpeggio, whatever. Then all the lines that share that visual "cue" or "trigger" can be dissected and combined into endless variations.

I'm pretty sure that Stochelo has some sort of personalized categorization. I've watched some videos of him where prior to playing a tune, he has to "search" on the fretboard to locate the key. But it only takes a few seconds. He plays a few licks and chord voicings and then it clicks and he's ready to play.

This leads me to believe that he has some sort of system to categorize licks. He's just not calling it by the names from conventional music theory.

Passacaglia

Hemert wrote:

I know I will be scolded for this but here goes: don't waste time training your ears.

Christiaan, really? I have to be honest - I cannot accept this. Much like I can't any longer accept that learning arpeggios is a waste; or learning theory is a waste; or....you name it, almost, is a waste. If Fapy can practice arpeggios, or Stochelo or Bireli can lock themselves in a room with the iron commitment to transcribe Django...well, how can this be a "waste of time?"

You see, all this stuff is tough for me because I'm older, I'm somewhat infirm, I came to this late and I've got a hunger and love for this music that, if I allow it, brings me to almost a perverse kind of obsessiveness, a more or less neurotic search for "the" answer to a million questions; to find safe ground, because I don't have the luxury of another life to toss off in finding my way. So I hear "the" way in, and I seek it out.

I do know this - I play with people who have absolutely no experience in this music. Literally, none but the year since I started this jam group. One in particular, woman who plays clarinet, stands out for me. I don't believe she is exceedingly schooled in theory. But she can hear the melody of a tune, maybe another's chorus, and absolutely explode in improvising, as if she were to the manor born. She is without a doubt, one of the stars in our humble firmament. Another, no longer playing with us, was an accordionist with a strong background performing in other styles of music. His first e-mail message to me, when querying about what we do, closed with, "if I can hear it, I can play it." He wasn't boasting, as I saw it firsthand.

That's ears, man. I know it. And I want that. I watched the DVD, can't recall which one, where Stochelo, Nous'che and Nonnie are in their living room, and they listen to a tune on a recording. Then they immediately take off. I hear your point of view, and I've heard it as a member of your academy - the facility that comes from having an extensive vocabulary so at hand, it's no longer slowed by conjuring - it's at the speed of reflex.

I hear that. But I cannot believe that when I see and experience these kinds of things first hand, or when I watch something like that DVD (might have been the special features off the Live at Samois DVD), "ears" have nothing to do with it.

Anyway, I'm being honest. Guys like me, with a lousy sense of surety (complicated by a late start, a bad break on physical health, a serious bent to devoteeism and perfectionism...a shitty combo), well....well, no, let me just say, not "guys like me," because that unfairly presumes others think like this. So let me say, I; I'm seeking something that's going to make my love for this music and my ability to play it, one, before I kick.

And that may never happen. But the promise of the holy grail doesn't help. My choice to seek it, and my delusion to believe it's the gate to greatness. But the only thing I'm certain of anymore is that it's just damned hard work, and unfortunately, it's not on solid ground.

"Dancing on a precipice of scree," I once wrote. That defines the pursuit, for me. Of anything worthwhile. I just need to remind myself there's honor in the dancing.