French virtuosos - how they became this way?

Buco

If I may add, and this was my first thought when this thread was brought up, Adrian (the US edition to be clear) to me is by far the best example of a motivated guy you can watch grow over the years through the Internet.

At first when I saw him on YouTube, I saw just an average player who somehow started getting millions of views on his YouTube videos.
Cut to the present and here you have someone who's growing into a truly world class player in this genre, about to join the ranks of rarified others.

To me it was and still serves as a motivation showing where steady and dedicated practice could take you.

jimbo978

adrian wrote: »

When first I saw that footage, I was very inspired. We were all beginners once!

OMG, I *NEED* to see it!

Buco wrote: »

If I may add, and this was my first thought when this thread was brought up, Adrian (the US edition to be clear) to me is by far the best example of a motivated guy you can watch grow over the years through the Internet.

For sure!

Jazzaferri

I really love Adrian's playing too. Really speaks to me.

dennis

I m curious to see the adrien stuff in 2004 because in 2002 or 2003, he was already quite good. Not spectacular or anything but clearly very promising. It was very clear that he was taking it very seriously at that time. In 2005, he was suddenly definitely playing at a very very high level.

dennis

The only lick i remember transcribing jn 2005 was more of a joke. He used to do this one lick all the time (he doesnt do it anymore) and my friend ritary and i used to quote it as an inside joke.

It was particularly special , just an ornamented major arpeggio but adrien was using it everywhere at that time

terrassier

dennis wrote: »

The only lick i remember transcribing jn 2005 was more of a joke. He used to do this one lick all the time (he doesnt do it anymore) and my friend ritary and i used to quote it as an inside joke.

It was particularly special , just an ornamented major arpeggio but adrien was using it everywhere at that time

How did it go ?

jimbo978

@dennis , Thank you for your response. I would really love to hear your take on this subject. For me, you are the perfect example of a gadje who started to play this music relatively late in his life (right..?), who've gained great (and authentic) technical contronl. Is there any chance you can share with us the way you approached the technical aspect of this music, especially on the first few years you were trying to master it? (before you became *THE* Dennis Chang ;-) ) did you play for hours a day? did you make yourself special drills, or you only played real musical examples? and how long did it take you to play comfortably (pretty much) at about 300bpm - eighth notes?

dennis

haha thanks but i wouldn't say that i play well. I started about 16 years ago if i'm not mistaken (I was still a late teenager then so, I don't know how late that is haha).

Like I said I wouldn't quite say that I play well. I definitely do know quite a lot but for years now I haven't had the time to really practice hard like say Gonzalo Bergara did ( I think we started around the same time). I think I can say that I can definitely survive if I had to jam with guys like Bireli, Stochelo, Angelo (which I actually have hahaha). I can definitely play rhythm guitar though :-)

Gonzalo and I obviously went in different paths. He's pursuing the artist life really hard, and it's awesome. The full-time professional touring musician life is just too brutal for me and I really like producing the videos that I do and I've been doing more and more of that for the past 6-8 years. It takes up all my time. The only way you can really get good is to practice a few hours every single day. My super busy schedule doesn't really allow that anymore. I still improve in some ways because I have quite good ears, and I learn extremely quickly but nothing beats practicing hard!

However, when I first started out, I was obsessed with only one thing. A friend of mine at that time said that non-Gypsies would never be able to play like Gypsies. That statement totally shocked me, and it become a huge obsession of mine to understand the "Gypsy" sound. I definitely worked really hard at trying to understand that and if I may dare say so, I succeeded.

Just a few days ago, my roommate and I were playing a game. He played random music for me, and I had to guess if the musicians were Gypsies or not. I pretty much guessed everything right.

Now to be clear.. Sounding like a Gypsy does not mean sounding better or worse. It's more like French people can hear the difference between different French accents, or how Americans can tell someone is from Boston or from southern USA, etc... IT has absolutely zero baring on the quality of music.

Sebastien Giniaux does not sound like a Gypsy, he sounds like himself. That's an even better thing! Same thing with Gonzalo. Adrien sounds like himself too... Actually if he restrained himself from playing all his weird stuff, he actually could sound like a Gypsy.

Joscho Stephan told me a great story about how when he started out, he wanted to do the same, he wanted to sound like Stochelo and those guys. When he released his record, people praised him for not sounding like that, when in his mind, that was the goal haha.. Joscho sounds like Joscho.

But anyway, that was really the thing I wanted the most back then, so I worked to get it by befriending Gypsies , and one thing led to another ... So that's all I can say about it. That hasn't been an obsession of mine for a long time so I wouldn't even want to try to sound like a Gypsy, I just really try to be myself, but that intense period of "cracking the code" has definitely had some permanent effects on me.

Nowadays, I don't know if we can really call this music Gypsy Jazz, there are so many sub-genres, and a whole new generation of players from about 2007 or so showed up from around the world. Many great players who have had little contact with Gypsies. Even if one has contact with Gypsies , it doesn't mean they'll get the sound either. 99% of these players don't sound like Gypsies, and I find that reallly cool and original ... what I find less original is the obsession trying to copy players like adrien, sebastien, etc... Furthermore, there are many Gypsy sounds; when I was playing that game with my roommate, I was telling him, that guy sounds Dutch, this guy sounds German, east of France, I nailed it every time. My mother has lived in Quebec for over 40 years, she still doesn't have a Quebecois French accent, and she doesn't have a Canadian English accent either.

The easiest Gypsy style for me to imitate is the Dutch style. If you listen to Thomas Baggerman, that's very clear.

This is getting a bit off topic so I'll stop here..

I will say one thing related to this topic though. I think Paris (not France, but specifically Paris) is a great place to learn Gypsy Jazz (however one chooses to define it), because there's live music all the time with all the best players. Paris is a place where even non-pros could be pros in other countries. It's the capital of French jazz music after all. I've seen lots of players move to Paris for the better. Brad Brose is one dude for instance. He was always a good player, but since moving there, I noticed a significant improvement. There are others I've met in other countries whom I felt had little hope because they were not really practicing hard in those countries. But when they moved to Paris they suddenly improved. My theory is because people in Paris can be quite direct and competitive. They're brutally honest people whether you like it or not. It's typical French culture (don't believe me? go to guitarejazzmanouche.com and read the forums, it can brutal over there), and it's the kind of place where if you don't adapt, you have very little chance, it's a major epiphany for many people. To give another example , I also noticed a huge difference in playing when Gonzalo first went to live in Paris almost 10 years ago. His playing changed considerably. It's all great!

Anyway, even though I speak fluent French, Paris never appealed to me for personal reasons... and my reasons for playing music are now my own and very different from what they were 10 years ago...

Jojo

Thanks @dennis for filling in a lot of gaps over several paragraphs. Never knew how 'Parisian' the scene, from a European point of view, seems to be (I'm in London, it's 'on my doorstep', it changes things....)

Jazzaferri

@dennis so well put into perspective.