The Seduction of Django's solos

Chiefbigeasy · October 2015

Got to say, I'm loving this conversation.

Coming from a blues and flamenco and rock background, I am embarked upon gypsy jazz with the idea that it was an enticing way to do the most difficult thing I have ever attempted on an instrument: learning jazz on the guitar. The rhythms and energy are so enticing that it really draws you in before you realize all that you need to do and know to pull it off.

With my background, and learning primarily by ear all my life, I learned how to solo in those other idioms with much-easier technique (at least for blues and rock), with a reliance on imagination and ear training to augment the technique. For example, in a lot of blues soloing, the licks are pretty standard and the range of area covered is pretty limited on the fretboard, but the variation of expression can come from sustain, pull-offs, vibrato, etc. In particular, I found that I could go a long way on rhythm variations and percussive attack patterns. This is not to take anything away from those great Blues Masters from Robert Johnson, Lightning Hopkins, Buddy Guy, Muddy Waters, BB King, Stevie Ray Vaughan. It's just that I found that I and many other players could sit down and do a pretty good imitation of these particular artists after a little bit of careful study and practice. Actually, the fact we can do this is one of the things it is so appealing about this music.

I think I'd seen the video once before on this site regarding improvisation. I think the instructor is talking about a rather high level of improvisation skill, to allow out that which is already in the mind, and to come to the realization that the instrument does not exist, only the instrument in our mind is what's real. Nonetheless, I don't think he undercuts the need to learn the vocabulary and master the technique which is the opening through which that music in our mind will travel.

I mentioned earlier in another post that I know this music is already in my head. I have walked around either with solos I've been studying or scatting some solos in my head all day. I decided to do what I've talked about the other evening: I sat down and recorded of my own scat singing over "I Can't Give You Anything But Love," A tune I'm currently working on with the help of Christiaan's videos and Anthony's book. I listened to the recording then picked out a couple of phrases to work out. They sounded fine, they sounded like what I understand Gypsy Jazz to sound like, but just because I had made it up in my head, it didn't make it any easier to learn it on the fretboard and call it up easily when I needed it.

The takeaway for me from this exercise is I still need to continue to digest the theory and technique of this music by whatever means possible, whether it's through very meticulous rational study, or by ear, or a combination of both. The seduction of memorizing Django's solos is that it allows me to have a fully formed and fleshed out expression of that kind of mastery flow through me for the brief time that I'm playing it. Actually, if done well, I think there's a benefit for the audience too. They get to hear that same expression of mastery live from an instrument directly in front of them.

And I'll say one more thing, at the risk of really going off the rails here: I think there's something really magical about Django's solos. Maybe it's because I'm relatively new to gypsy jazz, but I really feel his presence when I play the songs. It's hard not to want to reproduce them faithfully and accurately.

I remarked to a bandmate years ago during a rehearsal one evening that there is something magical about the sound of the guitar work in the song "Green River." I told my keyboardist that it seemed that John Fogerty was able to incorporate some sort of universal harmony, tapping into something that everyone could feel and hear as familiar. I guess I'm trying to say the same thing when I say I get that feeling while playing Django's "Nuages."

Jazzaferri · October 2015

I absolutely agree with you about Django's playing. While he has huge technical chops what really sticks out to me is his artistry. When he was on, its truly otherworldly.

I have told this story here before but after a particularly great concert an interviewer asked Kenny Werner what one thing he would ask for given one wish. His answer of more technique left the interviewer agape. Kenny went on to explain that the only thing that brought him back to earth while playing, was reaching for something he didnt quite have.

iamarealslow · March 2016

Old thread, but always relevant topic.
I need a sympathetic outing of some of the same comments here! Without offending my friends.
But the whole gypsy legacy thing is lost on me. It's like dragging your favorite dog around long after it's dead. The solos aren't even really improvisation as it is known now, unless you include free jazz. They were the ornate and exquisite result of extemporised ramblings through european music with all other influences added in. I understand the enthusiastic anticipation of learning the notes to the mans' solos. Just play one note, try and convince yourself that is identical. Of course, can't be done by anyone. He wouldn't even remember if he had played on the recording, more than once he asked 'who's that playing, hey that's good..'. There has never been anyone else who invested every note with that intensity of purpose. The violin was too facile for him to continue learning (the other one in QHCF did comment later that it was a relief to not have such a 'confrontational' style of guitarist doing the 'rythmn') - so he became a perfectionist 'artist', playing in the moment, choosing the guitar because it could be so expressive as well as harmonic. Luckily the technology was around to record it. For posterity, moments to re-live, of sheer grace. All those odd phrasings, individual notes picked out of a run - he did it just on the fly.
If he turned up at one of these revival festivals? He might find it all a bit weird. As the pilgrims too might find him, if he had moved on to other musical forms outside their straight-jacket.
There are some guys I know who read sheet music and play a durge blues of House of the Rising Sun or some such. Exactly the same every week, for 20 years. Like a rockstar solo.
Youtube is also full of flippy-flappy low action, light string 'manouche gypsy'.
Great, we all have fun. But nothing to do with Django! He didn't leave a 'Legacy', they burnt his caravan including all his possessions and money. There is an industry though....the books, dvds, guitars, why not a personal robot replicant since technology is advancing so fast. Yes, reveals the absurdity of it all.
Just play what you want if he inspired you - maybe nobody will even agree it is music, but enjoy yourself.
I've been there myself, done that and couldn't give 2 hoots for the afficiandos and guitar shop twaddlers opinions.
That is really what you could learn from listening to his recordings, be yourself. Maybe you aren't really musical and that's why you want a crutch and learn a tab or transcription of a master artist. In the end, it will not work, the gulf between him and you will get more and more obvious the more you practice, unless you are deaf or suffer from a conceited self-delusion. It doesn't matter if you aren't gifted in any case. Ethnic music is 100,000 years old and everyone takes part somehow.
You spend hours going over the same lick? Use the same time to drive to a drum-camp or similar, very useful and not 'in your head'.
Have a look at someone like Kaki King, headstrong, but found their own way.
Now I'm off to listen to some Django solos.

iamarealslow · March 2016

Sorry if that sounded negative, just had a quick look and maybe this is another way of putting it.
I play piano a bit, late learner. It's fun.
I listen to Rachmaninov played by a virtuoso, great. Do I kid myself that with the years left in my life I could do that too? No. And neither should you.
For some reason, because the guitar is so ubiquitous?, people think it is just a question of lots of practice and scales and so on.
No it is not. Django is so far above Bireli Lagrene and the others when they get themselves into his territory. And they are the hots at their stuff.
They learn solos, practice them over and over, repeat licks verbatim. For heavens sake, even 'perform' having learnt and rehearsed one of his improvisations! I don't admire that lack of understanding of context.
There is not a single repeat in any of Djangos recordings. Ever. He parodies his own 'kind of licks'; stop start, back to front, upside down, like a child with a toy. He was not universally admired or respected, he had a niche audience, then a heyday in occupied Paris, then a little lost with the flatness of the electric guitar technology when he was at the height of his musical abilities. So I take it everyone likes his paintings then?
That is why the recordings demonstrate a unique master artist on the edge of disaster, which he was a master at not only foreseeing and averting, but turning into unique expressive music. That edge was easy for him to get near, so it shouldn't be surprising that the final step should be compared to a unique virtuoso pianist. There are a few plectrum mishaps, but he carried on with those takes and let the recording be released regardless.
I think virtuoso and greatest are used too freely with jazz guitarists. They have their moments, but they are a bit too tame and predictable to be described as the one apart from the herd of greats every few hundred years.
Ever see the video of Bireli Lagrene fluster like a beginner with a live jam on 12 bar blues? I'm baffled why he responded like that. Can't actually deal with a novel situation?
It is interesting that there are no recordings that I can find of anyone copying his style in the 1930's. There are the assorted rythmn guitar solos, rehearsed song intros, few notes fill and others like Eddie Lang of course. But I mean an imitator who stood up and was counted with a recording to his name?
I mean if you could do it, it would have been good business sense to flaunt it.

Bones · March 2016

Hmmm, lots of notes but not sure what ur point is?

Russell Letson · March 2016

There is such a thing as reverse romanticism, and I think I spotted an example above. Music moves--is transmitted and received--in various ways, and copying a great/innovative/masterful player is one of them. In fact, just about every teacher/musical coach I've encountered has suggested transcribing influential solos as one way of developing one's own voice and style. This was also a crucial part of literary-rhetorical education in centuries past: you copied models and internalized the mechanisms that made them effective. In fact, I'm willing to assert that every artistic tradition with any long-term life operates this way.* As does, say, language acquisition--there may be something in the way we primates are wired. The apprentice-journeyman-master model works, even if many of us stall before reaching that last stage.

* From what I know of folk-rooted traditions, this process is at the heart of Hawaiian, gypsy, blues, and old-time/Appalachian music.

Jim Kaznosky · March 2016

Stirring the pot is also a time waster

crookedpinky · March 2016

I'm obviously wasting mine as well then, along with how many other thousands around the world ? I'm not sure that the lack of a recorded imitator of Django in the 30s means that he somehow failed to be influential and there is no legacy. Maybe no one did that because they couldn't. Anyway, I don't agree with the points made - when I can find them - so I'm happy to waste my life away on this pointless pursuit.