Electric Rest Stroke

Spalo

I've just ordered the Gypsy Picking book and very impatient to receive it.

One question: There's nothing stopping me using the Rest Stroke Technique on electric guitar, is there? After all Django sounded great when he was plugged in.

SP

MichaelHorowitz

Spalo wrote:

One question: There's nothing stopping me using the Rest Stroke Technique on electric guitar, is there? After all Django sounded great when he was plugged in.

Plenty of players use it on electric....Bireli, Stochelo....even Joe Pass did. However, you'll need to make sure your action is high and/or your strings are heavy. You also might find that you'll need to play with less force. Some Gypsies play the electric just like an acoustic and it doesn't really work.

BTW, this reminds me. Does anyone know much about Dick Dale? I've always wondered if he was a rest stroke player. I've heard he uses ridiculously heavy strings on his electric. And he's Lebanese, which is an obvious influence on his music. I wonder if uses the rest stroke (which is used on the oud and other Arabic instruments). Kinda sounds like it. Anyone know?

'm

Elliot

Dick Dale is a completely self taught player, so if he does, he does it naturally, out of necessity.

"Listen to the King of the Surf Guitar......!"

a

i've seen him play a couple of times and i'm pretty sure he doesn't use rest strokes...you can tell by the way he holds the pick and because his wrist is planted on the guitar.

dennis

i play a lot of electric guitar these days, and i don't have high action, i don't really see why you'd need high action (?)... i don't pick hard at all either, i also play on light gauge strings (from a jazz guitarist's perspective) 11s... to date i've only broken two e strings for the 3 yrs that i've owned this guitar...

a wrote:

i've seen him play a couple of times and i'm pretty sure he doesn't use rest strokes...you can tell by the way he holds the pick and because his wrist is planted on the guitar.

there seems to be a bit of confusion here... rest stroke has nothing to do with the way one holds a pick or the way the wrist is angled... rest stroke is just resting the pick against the adjacentr string ... if anyone's ever done a bit of sweep picking , they've used rest strokes... (just ask frank gambale )

a

by rest-stroke, i meant that he can't possibly be letting gravity pull his hand down because his wrist is stuck to the guitar. i always thought that a loose wrist was a key part of the rest-stroke thing.

MichaelHorowitz

dennis wrote:

i play a lot of electric guitar these days, and i don't have high action, i don't really see why you'd need high action (?)... i don't pick hard at all either, i also play on light gauge strings (from a jazz guitarist's perspective) 11s... to date i've only broken two e strings for the 3 yrs that i've owned this guitar...

It's all relative. I just mean if you have your electric strung with 8s and have the action super low it's probably not ideal for Gypsy rest stroke playing. Most of my teachers who where serious arch top players used super heavy strings and picked relatively hard. But some guys set their archtops up like strats. Gary Larsen, the famous cartoonist, used to live close to me. He plays guitar (really well) and came over one day. I couldn't believe how low his action was. I couldn't even play it. He couldn't even get a note out of my Favino....ha ha

'm

dennis

a wrote:

by rest-stroke, i meant that he can't possibly be letting gravity pull his hand down because his wrist is stuck to the guitar. i always thought that a loose wrist was a key part of the rest-stroke thing.

not necessarily , like i said , rest stroke has nothing to do with gravity or hand position or anything like that... if it did, then classical guitar players would defy the rules of gravity as their rest strokes are upstrokes on the i,m,a fingers!!

rest stroke is just letting the pick / finger rest accross the adjacent string after hitting a note.. which is i personally don't call the django technique "rest stroke" technique... i just call it the "django technique" (and of course he didn't invent it but..) which involves everything described in michael's book.

hey michael, can i send u some paulus schafer videos (on electric) i can't seem to get this thing to work (the file is 18 megs)

MichaelHorowitz

yeah...send me the vids. For some reason the forum doesn't seem to like files over 10megs.

a

is there anyway to download the forum videos? i wanted to show a friend of mine some of the stuff because he couldn't get windows media working. so, i offered to convert it to a viewable format but couldn't figure out how to download the video.

MichaelHorowitz

there's probably a way...I don't know.