Django and music theory

scot

No need for that. OK, it's been contentious at times but there have been many interesting replies to the original post. Even if some of these are of the "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" variety (apologies for using this again), I'd rather read these replies than any more beginner questions about how to string a guitar or something about picks. Stringing a guitar isn't rocket science. And the forum has been a bit boring of late... You read these kinds of posts, of course some of it seems like nonsense but I always manage to find something clever and/or learn something I did not already know. So let's keep it rolling, let's have more of this.

Now for my two cents. On the famous recording of the rehearsal at La Lanterne, you can hear Baro calling out the chords for the other musicians. So he knew at least that much. Two guitarists who played with Matelot a lot agreed that while he did not read music, he had near-perfect intuition about music which was why he was so sought after in the studios in the 50s, 60s and 70s. If you play a lot, you develop that sense of intuition where you know what chord is coming next and when it's coming. I don't know much theory but when I was playing a lot I had a little bit of this intuition. After all, the jazz repertoire is largely made up of similar chord sequences.

In the pre-war years, nearly everyone who played music could read. Most of the accordion players in Paris could read, Jelly-Roll Morton could read, Fats Waller could read, Stephan Grapelly could read. Poulette Castro could read. Roger Chaput could read. It was how most people learned music in those days. Django was an exception and I fully agree with Roger's position that he wasn't interested in such matters. If you don't need to know about something you're less likely to learn it. In an interview, Eddie Barclay said that if people started talking about this sort of thing, Django would usually just leave the room. He wasn't interested in intellectual matters - many people have said this over the years.

If we are going to parse words here, maybe we should throw "instinct" out and use "intuition" instead. The two words have similar meanings but intuition is usually only applied to humans. And intuition is kind of a mysterious and unquantifiable thing.

Buco

Yes, there's a lot of really good stuff in this thread.
It's great to see how many different approaches there are to get to the same destination basically.

Jazzaferri

I find it interesting that Glenn Campbell, was a member of the Wrecking Crew and he couldn't read the charts. He would have to ask Tedesco how it went. The other members of that most famous studio group said he had a phenomenal ears musical memory, and instinctive grasp of the harmony.

Lango-Django

I once heard a funny interview with Glenn Campbell.

His childhood hero was Frank Sinatra, and later in life he was thrilled to be booked as a backup musician for a big band recording session with Sinatra.

Glenn said something like, "Of the three rhythm guitarists on the session, I was the only one using a capo..." ;-)

Teddy Dupont

Lango-Django wrote: »

I once heard a funny interview with Glenn Campbell.

His childhood hero was Frank Sinatra, and later in life he was thrilled to be booked as a backup musician for a big band recording session with Sinatra.

Glenn said something like, "Of the three rhythm guitarists on the session, I was the only one using a capo..." ;-)

About that session, Glen Campbell said he was so overwhelmed by being with Sinatra and completely star-struck that he just could not stop staring at him. After a while Sinatra said to the band leader I think was "Who is that fag at the end who keeps staring at me?"

Glen Campbell is of course a great fan of Django. There is a quite recent photo of him presumably taken at his house with a picture of Django on the wall behind him.

NylonDave

Jerry Reid is using rest stroke picking here. I can't read Jerry's mind, especially since he is dead, but it seems like his motivation is to give him a really solid base to snap UP to get the chickin pickin sound for syncopated semiquavers.



There is a French dude just now who has a pretty similar technique. Probably he can finish a bowl of soup real quick if he has a mind to.

Jerry is playing with Glenn Campbell, although I am not sure that that is relevant.


D.

Lango-Django

Revenons a nos moutons- I've just been re-reading the part of the 2004 Dregni biography "Django: the life and music of a gypsy legend" that deal with Django's teenage apprenticeship in Paris as a banjo accompanist for various accordion players.

I think most of us at this site are already aware of this, but beginning at age 12, Django began working a nowadays incredible number of hours per week at these gigs.

Django's illiteracy probably played a factor in the development of his amazing ear, since unlike us 21st century players, Django couldn't bring a fake book or an iPad loaded with charts to the gig.

As Dregni says on page 30, "Django became a human jukebox with a vast repertoire of waltzes, tangos, javas and chanson filed in his memory."

it would also seem likely that Django must have needed to learn new tunes on the fly whenever he got a gig with a new accordion player.

*******

On page 63, Dregni recounts the Russian cabaret scene in Paris in the 20's and 30's, in which Django and the Ferret brothers found well-paying employment.

These cabarets typically had bands composed mainly of gypsies, and the music played included not only Russian songs and balalaika favourites, but also light classical music.

Perhaps this might have been the place where Django's love of classical music was born? We really have no idea, of course. But why not?

And of course, once again, Django is learning tricky unfamiliar music by ear without written notes.

*******

So when you consider this kind of musical background, should it really surprise us that Django would be able to assimilate abstract jazz concepts like tri-tone substitution just by listening and playing, while having no idea of the name of the concept, and being totally uninterested in discussing the musical theory behind it?

********

Given this context, Django's famous words, "I don't know music, but music knows me." actually make a lot of sense.

kevingcox

I remember back in my Shakespeare studies class in university the professor talking about how absolutely FAST the actors likely spoke their lines "back in the day" for the performances to be as short as they seem to have been. Yet people could follow it with ease. They were simply more comfortable with rhetorical devices used in every day speech and they were used to hearing things only once rather than the repetitive nature of, say, a soap opera.

By the same token, before mass media someone might only hear their favourite symphony a few times in their life. They are certainly paying more attention than when it comes on the radio for the umpteenth time. I know my memory was better before Google came along... you might argue I'm just getting older but actually KNOWING things is being devalued in our educational system as we focus on "critical thinking" and the like.

It is not difficult for me to imagine a time and culture in which such such observational skills as Django clearly had were cultivated and incentivized to the degree where explanation (which, to me, is the essence of theory) becomes largely irrelevant compared to actual execution.

Perhaps Django's thoughts on theory were rather like Bonini's paradox.

NylonDave

@Lango-Django That all seems like good solid common sense to me.

With all the materials so readily available to us today it is really easy to get lazy and spoiled.

I started playing by ear and pretty much abandoned that practice as soon as I got OK at reading music. Big mistake.

But I learned a lot all the same.

Now that I am trying to use my ears a bit more again I am slowly getting it in a different way.

If I had the choice I would start by making sure I divided my attention pretty equally between both. I don't think that there is really a competion I think that they feed from each other. The only people who think that there is are those who have invested too heavily on one way of doing things.

If you talk to someone who has to read A LOT like a principle clarintetist or flautist they admit that they never really read every note and that there is a lot of experiential (stepping back from the word instinctive for a moment)guesswork going on which is to say they are extrapolating a lot using their ear and imagination and knowledge of the style and the composer, it is the same when any of us read a book. You need to have your sightreading at a pretty good level for this to become obvious, but we all know that olny a nwbeee needs to raed ervey letter to get the point.

People playing solely by are are doing the same. And there needs to be A LOT of muscle memory to allow this to happen.

Sure I'll never be a Django but who amongst us will ? Wont stop me trying to work smarter as well as harder.

And that is why I am impatient with a council of despair presented as a solution.


D.

scot

Professor to student, 2015: "Of course it works in practice, you idiot. The important thing for us is, it must work in theory".

"It is not difficult for me to imagine a time and culture in which such such observational skills as Django clearly had were cultivated and incentivized to the degree where explanation (which, to me, is the essence of theory) becomes largely irrelevant compared to actual execution".

Kevin has found the crux of all this and articulated it as perfectly as possible, I think.