Newer players easier licks?

anthon_74

Over the last few months I've been teaching myself to play a couple of solos from great players and I was reminded of this thread. Both of the solos in question are from the promotional videos Dennis Chang put out there letting people know about new "in the style of" packages being released.

The first one I worked on was Bireli playing Django's Tiger, and the second one was/is Sebastian Giniaoux's Coquette. What I discovered while working these out actually supports this thread's premise, which is that the older gypsy players licks and phrases are harder to play than the modern players.

What I've found is that the Bireli solo is HARD. Several of the fast runs he does are so difficult that, even after quite a bit of practice, I still can't get them up to speed.

As for the Sebastian solo, I've only been working on it a short time, and I've already got most of it down, practically up to speed with far less practice.

Also, I've found that Bireli's phrasing is much harder to understand from a theory standpoint. He clearly plays almost exclusively what he hears in his head as opposed to any preplanned licks, as some of his stuff is very hard to attach to an arpeggio, and/or figure out what he was thinking when he played it.

In terms of the Sebastian solo, most, if not all is pretty clear what scale/arpeggio he was drawing an idea from.

IRONICALLY, when I simply watched each solo before ever trying them, I thought the Sebastian solo looked more challenging. Boy was I wrong.

anyway, NOT to say this holds true in all cases, but it did in this one. although, we are talking about Bireli here.

anthony