Only Gypsy Swing?

apwebb

Hi everyone,

I'm curious to know if everyone here only plays Gypsy Swing, or do you play other styles of music as well?

Is this wonderful music foundational to your playing or is it something that you have come to later?

And finally, what kind of effect has playing Gypsy Swing had on your other music?

For me, this is music I grew up with but the penny has only dropped recently on how to approach it. At the age of 40 and playing guitar for 27 years. :-)

So much catching up to do!

Since diving deeply into manouche guitar my other guitar playing has improved dramatically, and that is really saying something!

I hope you are all travelling well.

Andrew

Al Watsky

I play many different musics.
American Jazz and Blues.
Funk
Pop
Rock
Serbian folk
Russian
Moldavian
Jewish
Ukrainian
Greek
Sometimes all at the same time.
I've been playing for over 50 years.
Thats a lot of notes.

Lango-Django

My other instrument is 4-string banjo (plectrum tuning CGBD) and I play Dixieland jazz.

Jazzaferri

I play sax and guitar. I started classical piano when 6, sax when 10 and guitar when the Beatles came along. When I was young my trumpet playing oldest friends dad was a fabulous pro swing guitar player. I heard a lot of what is now called GJ but on electric a la late Django.

I play GJ and a bit of classical on guitar and sax. And play r & b, blues, rock and big band on sax.

Ryan Rhea

Are all of you multi-genre players able to turn on and off the rest stroke style at will when playing other genres, or has that become your de facto picking method for the other types of music, as well?

RR

Al Watsky

If I'm switching styles it might take a second to adjust.
Its a mental adjustment.
I once asked my violin instructor how he managed to go from playing violin to viola during the course of a performance without warming up.
He told me that at the moment he put down the violin till the time he picked up the viola he was mentally preparing himself for the differences and that rather that wait for his body to adjust ,which might be rather slower, he adjusted his thinking , that way by the time he got the viola up to his chin he was ready.
Lots of it is the mental game.

Joli Gadjo

@stuart BB King only plays downstrokes, so you should be well equipped to play Blues as well.

Barkonator

I also play heavy metal \m/

I am still new to this style and have been focusing on my technique for the last 8 months though... not a whole lot of rocking out going on over here these days. My amp is getting dusty!

Russell Letson

I played folky fingerstyle for more than thirty years before taking up swing, and another decade before trying GJ rhythm, which I play with a decided American accent. But then, I play Freddie Green style with a GJ accent, so it's all symmetrical. (I suspect both are the result of listening to big-band drummers and having that pulse in my head.)

The guys I play with are likely to call tunes from all over the place--Monday night I moved from "Daydream" to "Folsom Prison" to "Slow Boat to China" to "Long Haired Country Boy" to "Bicycle Built for Two"--and my partner is quite capable of calling "All Blues" or "Ghost Riders in the Sky."

Jazzaferri

I find rest stroke extremely challenging on sax......I hope to get there one day..............Hmmmm maybe if I let go of the pick........

when I do jazz comping on guitar. I use fingerstyle.... I don't think I could switch picking styles...that would require thought and I suck when I play and think at the same time.

Jon

I studied and worked playing modern/mainstream jazz for years before finding this stuff. Still teach and do the odd gig/recording in that style. I relearned my technique from scratch to play GJ, and find that I can't and don't want to really mix the two at all - I learned the rest stroke along with the GJ vocabulary that I now associate with it. When I play my Gibson or Tele, I use pretty strict alternate picking, but on the Favino, always rest stroke.

I also learned the modern stuff very differently - less based on licks, and more on individual discovery, improvisation, and first principles. That is something I like in that style, whereas I prefer the old-school, model based, conservative approach and sound in GJ, which is very different.

So, the two are very distinct for me, but abstract theory/music fundamentals like fretboard knowledge and chord progressions are constants I think. Aside from that, it's like playing different instruments for me. Whether this is good or bad is not a call I'm going to make