Django with flattop Mac

Teddy Dupont

You can of course get a reasonable idea of how Django fingered solos from these two clips.

Teddy Dupont

....and of course:-

dennis

i do have to include examples to explain what i mean, but don't mistake what i said, he did solo with 2 fingers for single notes. he used the other fingers for chords and octaves. The other fingers were much more flexible than one might imagine. flexible enough to do some of the chords we see in pictures.

What i meant to say is that, his handicap didn't force him into a specific fingering. At least not all the time, he would use the same shapes that we would have used had he had all his fingers.

So to me, personally, if i learn a django solo note for note, i don't try to play it with two fingers. The difference in sound is negligible enough whether you use 2 fingers or more. The key is to understand the shapes that he liked

Jojo

Ah yes, I did know that. However, wouldn't it be fair to say that the extensive use of 6/9 chords are due to the curve of his third finger. Instead of playing a, perhaps, more difficult straight major chord, the 6/9 would be much easier for him to play but also making the sound more ambivalent and interesting?

dennis

Yes, I was talking about lead playing. Obviously, Django had to come up with alternative voicings for many chords. Nonetheless, he still used triads (watch the j'attendrai video, where he plays a simple C barre chord)

here's a perfect example of what i mean:



watch the video above, the gentleman is trying to use a 2 finger approach but makes the mistake (which i would have made had i not made my discovery) of letting the 2 finger handicap influence his choice of fingerings

look at the big G#m7b5 arpeggio shape (over E7) at 0:18. Notice that he consistently uses 2 notes per string, and then shifts downwards for the descent... Django played that arpeggio in the same position with no shifting (except a stretch to reach the top F#). In other words, it was all played betwen the 9th and 12th frets with the exception of the top F# (14th fret)..

He would basically use his middle finger to shift from the D string to the G string on the adjacent frets (12th to 11th fret)... If you slowed down the originally recording and isolated the notes F# and G# (played on G and B strings), you would hear both notes ringing together. Whenever he played this shape in other recordings (Echoes of France for instance) , you hear the ringing of the two notes.

Shemi

Yeah... My ears and my gut told me that he was doing this at times. I spent a little time playing around with ideas of how he could have logically overcome this problem. The kind of "horizontal finger roll", or in my case the roll with a little slide because I don't have the longest fingers, seemed like a good answer to the question and made those positions physically possible. Plus it looks like Django had some long fingers which would make it easier IMO. I find it workable with both the middle and index.

With a bit of practice, I really do feel it is more than achievable, but like you Dennis I only want to know from the perspective of how he thought about the fingerboard. I came to the conclusion long ago that I will only ever play like me, and I will always use all 4 fingers.

Impressive detective skills there Dennis... I look forward to a future article on the subject! :-)