Manouche guitars used in other genres?

jwpfeifer

Hi Everyone,

I was curious to find out if any of you are using Gypsy Jazz guitars in other kinds of music? I bought my first Gypsy Jazz guitar recently from this site, and have been thoroughly enjoying playing it and getting into this style of music, listening to a lot of other players, etc.

I'm a composer and I like to write instrumental music for a variety of projects, which is why I bought this guitar, as a way to provide me with access to some sounds that I couldn't get from my other instruments.

As I've been getting acquainted with my new guitar and becoming more familiar with the tone, I can see right away that this guitar is going to be great to use for Freddy Green style acoustic rhythm parts in addition to the more traditional La Pompe style rhythm sounds.

I also noticed that the guitar can get an almost middle-eastern sound quality to it when you pick in a certain way and use some of the scales/modes common to that type of music. As I've been using my heavy 3.5mm Wegenpick the tone can also be very round like a classical guitar, for single note lines. This could be great to use for parts where I would normally use a classical guitar to play the melody, since the Gypsy Jazz guitar has a punchier quality to it that could help it stand out in the mix.

Anyway, just wondering if any of you are using your Manouche guitars for other styles of music besides the more traditional Gypsy Jazz music. I can see some interesting uses of this guitar sound for a few other applications. I once saw a western swing band where someone was using a GJ guitar for rhythm chops, and it sounded great, fitting into the mix just like a good arch top would have been used.

-Jim

Al Watsky

Not as a sales pitch but check my site Al Watsky.com.
I've got a couple of clips of my Djangle Box Project up.
Also on sound cloud.
If you check CDBaby you can check the clips of the 11 tunes on my new CD
Al Watsky and The Djangle Box Project.
You may or may not like the music but all of it was recorded using the French guitars for melody and rhythm .
Clearly they are very versatile . Especially in the recording studio.
There are a couple of Favino's on there as well as an AJL .
There is a wide range of possibilities.
All the tracks are instrumental.

jwpfeifer

Awesome stuff Al! This is great. This is what I was hoping to find, some players out there who are doing some mixtures of genres where the GJ guitar is part of that sound. Excellent playing and writing!

Al Watsky

Thanks !

Bohemian

"Hard" CD available ?

Good stuff.

Al Watsky

Yes Bohemian, I have CD's .

Rob MacKillop

Good point, Stuart. The European jazz guitar?

VeedonFleece

Hi Jim,
Not sure if this is exactly what you mean, but I play a kind of bastardised middle-eastern oud style on my d-hole sometimes, along with quite a lot of jazzy hybrid picking, as well as some more straight-ahead manouche technique. As an example of the former, you could check out our rendition of 'Bu Sene', a traditional Turkish folk song (or uzun hava, to be more specific). It's here on our Soundcloud:

https://soundcloud.com/sheboshka/bu-sene

Best,
Chris

Barengero

I played my Maccaferri guitar in a song of Peterlicht many years ago ;-)

http://www.djangobooks.com/forum/uploads/FileUpload/meinrad_jungblutandbarengero_188.mp3

Scoredog

It's really about intent. I find if the intent is there you can use almost any instrument on anything. Some of the best scores happen when you put an instrument as a voice where it is unexpected. One question is what kind of composer are you, some people will write a song with 3 chords and call themselves a composer, others can orchestrate and can conduct an orchestra. Understanding where you come from can help narrow down answers.

jwpfeifer

Hi Scoredog,

You are right. The term composer is kind of a vague term. In my case I write instrumental pieces aimed at film/TV and commercials. The styles vary depending on the kind of mood and overall vibe I'm trying to capture. Some of the songs are more orchestral in nature, some are Indie, and some are recreations of retro 50's/60's styles (space-age pop, surf, spy movie sounds, rockabilly, etc)

Here is a link to my page with various songs that I've written.
http://crazycomposer.com/category/compositions/

There's one song that I was working on last year called "Park Bench", where it would have been great to have the Gypsy Jazz guitar back then. Instead, I used a ukulele to do all of the rhythm guitar parts.

I don't really have any specific style that fits all of my songs, but I'm always on the hunt for new sounds that I can use in my song writing. The new guitar will be put to good use! I just started this blog post to find out what other people where doing with their guitars and explore the possibilities.

-Jim