I need a book that will tell me...............

David F.

How to calculate the guitar chords for written music. My reading ability is very basic. I realize this is more like "music theory 101" than Gypsy Jazz 101, but humor me.............
Thanks in advance

Joli Gadjo

If you want to learn some chords for accompaniment, I assume any book like the Nolan's books, Cosimini, Watremez should provide you good guidances.
Michael's Rhythm book is more sophisticated and more detailed if you want to study further.
If your question was about chord melody, although I never spent much time studying it, Jody Fisher's book should be a good resource.
In the meantime:
http://www.jazzguitar.be/forum/comping-chords-chord-progressions/5651-django-reinhard-chords.html

Jim Kaznosky

Take a look at this. http://www.guitarmasterclass.net/guitar_forum/index.php?showtopic=51072

Lango-Django

You don't explain exactly what you are trying to do, but it sounds to me like you've got piano sheet music for which you want to figure out guitar chords, yes?

Question one--- will you be playing along with the piano?

If so, you'll have to photocopy the score and laboriously pencil in every chord name above the clef line. Don't worry, you'll get better at this as you go along and many or most of the chords will repeat and you'll recognize these instead of agonizing over each one note by note.

Don't worry about really "busy" passages, because you don't really need to play every single chord that the pianist does... you can even lay out for a few bars if need be.

*****************

If you're not playing with a piano, you can be much less literal and basically choose your chords by ear.

I play in a band that does a lot of obscure tunes from the twenties. I'm the only one in the group capable of making up charts, so I do almost all of them, and sometimes have to figure out the chords from piano sheet music.

Experience has taught me that twenties piano arrangements used a whole bunch of unnecessary passing chords that may have made the arrangement more interesting for a solo pianist to play, but they just get in the way for playing jazz... My philosophy is to pare down the chords to the absolute minimum and I find that works best for both the rhythm section and the soloists.

It really, really helps me to go to YouTube and listen to the song, if that is possible.

Good luck!

Will

David F.

Lango,
I'm doing this to play along with a violist, so this won't be one chording instrument accompanying another.

lacrossehotclub

I do this at tradition Irish sessions a fair bit... listen to a melody and come up with appropriate guitar chords. If you're the only accompanist its simpler since you don't need to coordinate your chording with another player. You need to know about chord families and develop your ear. For me it was learning a bunch of Beatle tunes by ear and eventually learning about ii V I patterns, turnarounds, relative minors, etc. With open melodies often more than one chord choice is possible so it's also a matter of personal taste. There's no short cut other than learning a bunch of songs, along with a little music theory, to inform your playing. Have fun with it!

Lango-Django

Ah! Then I assume the sound your violist wants is the sound of a gypsy guitar?

Then my advice would be to just try and see whether the piano chords you're trying to replace are major, minor, seventh, augmented, diminished, etc and just play those chords using your normal fingerings, and not try to play the exact piano chord voicings... there may be some passages that call for arpeggios instead of chords and once again, I'd just play those as you normally would and not be a slave to the score.

I wish there were some cool shortcut I could suggest, but the only one I can think of is to get a recording of the arrangement and try to fake along with it...