My Progress in Jazz Manouche

AmundLauritzen · June 2014

I wanted to share my progress in learning this style.
I recorded a video where I play note for note(almost) Stochelos solo on "My Blue Heaven" from The Rosenberg Academy. At the end, Stochelo fired off the arsenal of triplets, which my technique is not capable of reproducing, so I made a little replacement there which I think sounded decent.

So I share this as a thank you to Stochelo and Christiaan for the opportunity to learn, and as my testimony to the old school way of learning this music, by learning solos note for note.

Any critique is welcome and very appreciated.

Bones · June 2014

Wow, way to go Amund!

pickitjohn · June 2014

@AmundLauritzen

You sure been putting in your time it really shows,
Guitar sound great whatever your doing keep it up.

Thanks for the great post…

pick on

pickitjohn :peace:

Hemert · June 2014

Bravo Amund! You make us proud (Stochelo is very impressed as well, as is Moses). I know you have been putting in (and are still putting in) countless hours of practice - on our forums you mentioned 6-8 hours a day once - so if anything you prove one thing: hard work pays off!

You can listen for hours, read for hours, study theory and work out systems but in the end it's just the time you spend with your instrument practicing the stuff you want to play over and over and over again. I'm thrilled you've chosen the Rosenberg Academy for now to find that material!

I bet you'll be an inspiration for many beginning gypsy jazz players because I know just three years ago you were one and now you could teach the stuff. I remember you once asking on our forums if it was possible to record a song with Stochelo with long stretches of dominant because you were lacking material to fill those, guess you've got that down now.

You can jam with anyone and hold your own. I hope to see you at a jam one day (Samois?).

Maybe you could share with everyone what your gypsy jazz practice regiment looks like?

Edit

Ok, one little tip

: those three consecutive dominant 9 chords on 0:13 don't sound powerful enough. Easy to solve:

- for chordal passages add some right arm (to assist the wrist) to get more sweep
- make sure your pick travels fast through all the strings so don't focus on attacking the strings with power but with speed (subtle difference)
- some people mute the G-string in this chord because they cannot straighten the pinky while keeping the other fingers rounded. It seems to me that (like me) you have this problem. There are several solutions but the best one is to finger the chord like Django: 1-2-1-3-3. Now you only need to round the second finger while keeping the first and third finger straight. This takes a little getting used to but you can be sure you'll make every string ring.

AmundLauritzen · June 2014

Thanks for the input on the chords. I'll take a look at that.

I was planning on going to Samois this year, but I am in the process of moving into a new home, and my schedule was changed due to unforeseen events, so I can't make it this year. I hope to go next year though!
I'm really, really eager to get into jamming with people as almost nobody play Django music where I live.

As for my practice regimen, it consists mostly of practicing the solos I have learned like one would practice a classical piece. But I use slow-down software to slow it down to a tempo where I can play it and then I raise the tempo in increments of 1,2 or 5% depending on the tempo of the piece.
I play through the piece I'm working on on average 5, 10 or up to 20 times in a day depending on how I feel that day. Then I practice rhythm with that song a couple of rounds. In the end I practice improvisation where I take phrases I know from previous songs I've learned and see where I can use them in the song I'm currently practicing.

This will take me about 1-2 hours, depending on how I practice that day. Then I repeat the process with other songs, or I just practice improvisation on different tunes.

To be honest, I don't practice as much as I used to anymore, but my practicing is now much more focused so I get a lot more out of my 2-3 hours that I practice now than the 6-8 hours I used to practice before.

Because now that gypsy picking is more comfortable to me, I can spend less time on technique and more time on repertoire and musicality, which is much more fun. I still do technical exercises. In a new piece I learn, be it by Stochelo or someone else, there's usually a passage or two with triplets, 16ths or free time bursts. Those I isolate and practice separately.

It's a long and slow road to go, but it's motivating to see a bit of progress as a reward for the hard work. I hope the observations that I have made can help those who are in the beginning phases of learning this music.

Bones · June 2014

Very interesting practice regimen. What would be an example of a technical exercise that you would practice to build technique and dexterity?

AmundLauritzen · June 2014

Bones wrote: »

Very interesting practice regimen. What would be an example of a technical exercise that you would practice to build technique and dexterity?

Diminished arpeggios with all downstrokes is a good one. These are often played in triplets so that usually makes them a bit more difficult to play.
I take any lick in a solo that is particularly challenging and practice it as a technical exercise. That could be the whole lick, or I pick out the essential part that gives me trouble and turn it into a looping exercise.

An example of what was my primary technical exercise for this month is the triplet lick that Stochelo plays at 1:28-1:30 in this video:

That's the one I couldn't play, and had to make a replacement for. So even if 8th notes are somewhat comfortable to me at that tempo, that lick in particular is challenging due to the triplets which makes it a lot faster, and the picking pattern that causes some string skipping.

"Djangology" was the song I practiced the previous month, and it was fairly easy because of the tempo, but there was some challenging licks like 0:47-0:49.

So there was another triplet lick! I looped that as an exercise with the metronome as a warm up every day.

Bones · June 2014

Ok, I see what you are saying. Yes, I will do a similar thing if there is a particular lick in a transcription that I can't get up to speed. I continue to work on it separately but make up my own as a substitute which is actually kind of fun as well and a bit creative. For example the fast run that Stochelo does over the E7 in the theme for Bossa Dorado.

thanks for all the info.

AmundLauritzen · July 2014

This month I've worked very hard on Stochelos solo on "Sweet Georgia Brown" which was the June lesson at the Academy.

My take is far, far from perfect, but then again it's a fast tempo.

I didn't want to start another thread since I already have a bunch floating around so I'm posting it here:

Hemert · July 2014

Good job as always. And it shows that it is definitely possible to use Stochelo's picking patterns with all the single string double down strokes, even if you're not Stochelo and even when you started learning this style after 20!