upstroke / downstroke dilema

Jazzaferri

You are where you are and if you are enjoying the process time is irrelevant....as opposed to timing, which is almost everything. LOL

When you can play it slowly, in a completely relaxed fashion without thinking about what you are playing, you will have mastered it.

Hard to recommend without knowing a lot more of where you are musically. How is your knowledge of scales? arpeggios?

T1mothy

Im about to move to new town to study at university and I might have less time and yeah I love those songs. I play the django s tiger roughly at not even 70% speed and I love it anyway. But that thought of being able to improvise - oh my. So anyway to the music knowledge of mine. Scales - I know how to build major, minor natural, harmonic, melodic. I know how to build triads, major, minor, diminished (I dont have the notes memorized for all the 12 possibilities. I can recall CEG, GBD without hesitating btu thats it. Other stuff would take me a second to figure out on my own.) but I havent really gotten myself to get theese under my fingers in 12 keys all over the fretboard same with the scales because I simply dont know what to start with and if its even worth it.

psychebilly

I realize this thread is about picking, but I couldn't help but bring attentionn to a previous thread that, to me, dovetails perfectly....

I was reading this thread the other day, and so I tried playing around with the idea for an hour or so....

stuart wrote: »

Given the task you've set yourself @Chiefbigeasy you should definitely invest some time in playing with your first two fingers, it will really give you an insight into how Django played and why he made the choices he made. Also, there are some real advantages to two finger playing - it is actually really fast, it makes you think a lot more about positioning, it is mentally efficient (you are only ever thinking about what to do with two fingers, not four) it encourages chromatic playing and vertical licks, and the second finger is your longest, strongest finger. Sitar players are quite strict about only using the first two fingers for all these reasons. It's hard to keep up but you will come out of it using your second finger more and a lot of licks will make more sense.

It may help you visualize what Django's musical "intentions" were...maybe will make songs & solos easier to figure out. Modern guitar players are taught (and self-taught) to use all 4 fingers and spread the fretboard out for maximum reach and notes-per-string. Using 2-fingers seems to simply the process for modern guitar players, and make sense of Django's playing.



As far as picking goes, down-picking and "sweeping" everything all the time cleanly, slowly, building up speed is the only way....

Scoredog

The easiest way I have found to to deal with the double down picking going back down the strings is to envision the 2nd down as the first note of the next phrase in a triplet pattern. If you can get your head around that it might make it easier.

I love how everyone says start slow and build up, I am not sure that will always be the case in the future, it certainly has been since musicians started practicing seriously but say per example in tennis things have changed. The old style was practice slowly getting the ball over the net and build up speed, that is no longer how serious youngsters are often taught. Now aspiring tennis players are taught to make solid contact and hit hard and eventually find the court. I believe that method could work with speed picking also. Get a fast picking technique early, but of course this is unproven and I am not suggesting it but I won't be surprised if that method is eventually in play.

Jim Kaznosky

As an aside, I look at being frustrated as a good thing. In a best case scenario, it will motivate you to improve, provided you keep things simple and focus on a task at a time. There is a lot to learn in this music and it is not easy by any stretch.

DragonPL

Just get a Jazz III pick and fall throughs the strings with big wrist movements, and no matter what picking technique you use you can get a loud percussive sound if you attack it hard

Buco

Scoredog wrote: »

The easiest way I have found to to deal with the double down picking going back down the strings is to envision the 2nd down as the first note of the next phrase in a triplet pattern. If you can get your head around that it might make it easier.

I love how everyone says start slow and build up, I am not sure that will always be the case in the future, it certainly has been since musicians started practicing seriously but say per example in tennis things have changed. The old style was practice slowly getting the ball over the net and build up speed, that is no longer how serious youngsters are often taught. Now aspiring tennis players are taught to make solid contact and hit hard and eventually find the court. I believe that method could work with speed picking also. Get a fast picking technique early, but of course this is unproven and I am not suggesting it but I won't be surprised if that method is eventually in play.

I think Kenny Werner in his book has a good take on that. Something like when you wanna be mindful of what you play and your choice of notes practice slow but also, and make sure this time you approach it as "there are no wrong notes", just go to town with your instrument and play as fast as you can without worrying too much what comes out but just liberate yourself that you can play fast.

Charles Meadows

It seems like eveyone agrees that the traditional stuff sounds best with proper gypsy style. But some of the newer stuff probably works well either way. Some of Angelo's more modernish stuff he does with strict gypsy technique - but I think that's how he plays everything.

Jazzaferri

Scoregog....the best way to practice that I have found is to practice cleanly, most of the time.....and spend a little time each day playing as fast as possible not worrying about clean, mistakes or such.

The important thing in practice, IMO,many I got this from Kenny W. Is to keep in a relaxed musical mental space. For most pratice staying at whatever speed gives you the accuracy one wants while staying relaxed, with the odd venture into not caring what it sounds like but feeling fast but still relaxed. That's the ticket. Slower for the first year or two, it starts to really pay dividends..

Coming up on 4 years back on sax, and 10 years on effortless mastery that concept is now really starting to show how true it is.

Scoredog

That's pretty much how I do it now.