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Trying to compete with too loud rhythm is the reason why many less experienced players have the feeling that "at home things always seem to work better"!
What is your recommendation on how someone might approach the exercises in your second FAQ to achieve maximum results? Right now, I start at a tempo where I am very relaxed, take one pass through the exercise, move a metronome up 10bpm, and repeat until I get to a point where I am feeling maximum tension to the point where I can not complete the exercise at all.
Some days, at this point, I back down the metronome 20-30 bpm, and move up in 5bpm increments until I reach critical mass. I'll then move on to the next exercise.
Generally, I feel that I've reached a speed barrier with certain note groupings that I can't seem to break past. While I am specifically talking about your recommended exercises, I am generally speaking to conquering difficult passages in any solo.
thanks
Your approach seems like a good daily work out. Here's a way to break through your speed barrier over time by doing the following ONCE or TWICE a week (so not every day):
1. Start out by listening to a good recording of a super fast gypsy jazz tune (Rosenberg Trio comes to mind). This will get your brains to start processing music at a higher tempo (sounds weird I know but it really works, Hal Galper recommends it too).
2. Now dial in your desired tempo (or let's say 20 beats above your maximum) and just try hard for about 8 to 10 minutes. Just give it everything you've got without being judgmental about your playing. Maybe you'll succeed to play one bar fast, maybe 5 bars maybe everything but really sloppy. It doesn't matter, just go for it.
3. Now dial the metronome back 50 beats and work your way up to the original fast tempo by raising the tempo in increments of 5 or 10 bpm over a time span of 15 to 20 minutes. Again don't be too critical when things become difficult as you start to approach the original tempo. Being critical is for the other days when you're really working on the exerises on slower tempos.
If you do this for a couple of months you will absolutely break your barrier (but of course hit a new one) and faster than if you wouldn't do this "drill".
I once asked Stochelo if he was ever bothered by being too soft against a rhythm guitar in an acoustic setting. He just said that in order to play the stuff he routinely plays he needs to keep the picking light so he doesn't concern himself with his volume at all. Now what happens is interesting: because the playing is so crystal clear and his timing and phrasing world class (and because he has a very good guitar) you can still hear evertything he does even though there might be loud rhythm.
This problem is also the reason I keep hammering on "play rhythm softly" in my first Q&A.
I tell ya, on violin this is all so easy. It is much, much easier to play gypsy jazz on violin than it is on guitar although it is of course much harder to learn how to play violin from a technical standpoint. It is therefore somewhat strange that in most gypsy groups the level of the lead guitar player is much higher than the level of the violin player.
Not easy, I've yet to beat myself in thinking I'm too quiet and no one can hear anything I'm playing (our regular monthly gig is in a super loud trendy bar where we're just a live jukebox) therefore I need to crank it up.
But actually now I seriously won't care whatsoever, I'll just do my thing.
Thanks!
Jim, what I've been doing, and there's been some research that would suggest it's the as good if not better approach than incremental stepping up, is take my max speed goal and cut that speed in half, practice for a while, half hour or whatever, then go to your target speed. Alternate until you succeed. It's helped me break through what I thought I couldn't reach otherwise a few times and it's how I practice majority of the time.
Thanks for pointing this out Christiaan. The volume issue is a constant battle in Gypsy jazz. It is especially frustrating at impromptu jams where the rhythm volume gets totally out of control and all the solos devolve into octaves and chord hits as single notes can no longer be heard. More than once I've seen top players like Angelo Debarre refuse to join a jam unless they were plugged in as they didn't want to battle it out with an army of rhythm guitars. It's always so refreshing to play with a group of sensitive musicians who instantly adjust the volume so that the soloist can be heard....
@Buco I and most people here have probably done more than their fair share of these "background music" type gigs. They pay a little bit and it keeps you playing but I feel they also reinforce some really bad habits. Most importantly, you don't learn to play with dynamics and like you said, you end up banging out everything at full force just to compete. Then, when you step onto a concert stage you feel totally naked as you've spent years playing over a din of crowd noise. I've stopped doing these sorts of gigs in recent years....too bad their aren't too many situations you can perform where it's actually quiet.
The other side of this is if you don't play many concerts then you also feel uncomfortable as it is not a usual occurrence, so what is better, playing in a bar and doing a few concerts or not playing in a bar and not playing very often.
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