Duved Dunayevsky: The 1930s Django sound

Jojo

This is from Le Quecumbar site. He's doing a gig there on the 16th July " Duved Dunayevsky is an emerging artist whose “voice” is clearly his own, and yet strikingly reminiscent of Django Reinhardt’s. Born in Israel and largely self taught, Duved spent his teens playing jazz fusion with a special focus on the work of John Scofield. He knew of Bireli Lagrene back then, but only through Birel's work with Jaco Pastorius. After discovering Django’s music Duved dedicated himself completely to it. Along the way he has garnered a reputation for his remarkable ability to channel “that sound” loved by Django fans and sought by students of the style. In 2015 he received a visa of “Talent and Competence” from the French government and moved to Paris where he formed Duved‘s Hot Five, which captures the sound and feel of the original Quintette du Hot Club de France. Another project of his is Duved’s Pre-Bop Orchestre, a band of ten musicians playing original compositions influenced by swing and classical music"

Scoredog

The videos are good and concise, love that...maybe the most important thing is not talked about. The landing points on the one chord. Often 6ths, 7ths and occasionally 9ths...roots, 5ths and 3rds like in traditional bop not so much.

Buco

You know Will @Lango-Django when you mentioned his good knowledge of theory, I heard something interesting this year from both Duved and Emanuel Kassimo. They would explain the concepts that you can use to put more interest in your playing. Then someone would ask where does that come from theory wise.
They both said similar thing, "it sounds good, why do you care?". Well the student would persist and always win. They both knew the theory behind and would explain it but would finish by repeating hey if it sounds good learn how to use it and don't worry about theory.

Petrov

Scoredog wrote: »

The videos are good and concise, love that...maybe the most important thing is not talked about. The landing points on the one chord. Often 6ths, 7ths and occasionally 9ths...roots, 5ths and 3rds like in traditional bop not so much.

I've noticed this aswell and I've been using this much more. Really changes the overall sound.

Jim Kaznosky

Buco wrote: »

You know Will @Lango-Django when you mentioned his good knowledge of theory, I heard something interesting this year from both Duved and Emanuel Kassimo. They would explain the concepts that you can use to put more interest in your playing. Then someone would ask where does that come from theory wise.
They both said similar thing, "it sounds good, why do you care?". Well the student would persist and always win. They both knew the theory behind and would explain it but would finish by repeating hey if it sounds good learn how to use it and don't worry about theory.

Or figure it out yourself why it works rather than getting it spoon fed.

Lango-Django

Or figure it out yourself why it works rather than getting it spoon fed.

True, and I try to do that but...

I'm currently working on "Exactly Like You"... and if you look at the first chorus, bar 31, 32 plus the first bar of the second chorus... there's a cool middle-Eastern sounding hammer-on phrase just packed with Ab and Bb notes...

... and for the life of me I can't see how it relates to the C and G7 chords it's played over...

Perhaps someone smarter than yours truly can enlighten me?

Thanks!

Will

BillDaCostaWilliams

... and for the life of me I can't see how it relates to the C and G7 chords it's played over..

Will, my take on these bars is that he plays variations on an idea based around an altered G7 (i.e. b9 and #9) where tension is introduced by first anticipating the phrases while the harmony is still on the tonic C before the G7 and then extending it over the C when returning to the tonic from G7.

So I hear it as a motif giving "weird notes over C ... not so weird over G7 ... weird over C and final resolution to C"

wim

Buco wrote: »

"it sounds good, why do you care?"

Because understanding the theoretical context allows you to use the same idea in new situations, rather than just parrot the idea over the same chord / position.

It's much easier to adapt the "sound" into other situations e.g. transpose to other keys or different octave/strings.

That's a great skill to have, and to be honest, a skill that players who have learned the true gypsy way can sometimes be lacking (or rather, they get there, but it might takes them longer than necessary).

Buco

That's a great point Wim and I'll try to remember it.
It's just that when Duved says "you can play m4 over the domV during 2-5-1" and demonstrates how great it can sound when musically applied, that's specific enough to me.
Then you hear: "but master, why?", "why does it work?".
In that case I agree with "who cares why?".

NylonDave

Buco wrote: »

That's a great point Wim and I'll try to remember it.
It's just that when Duved says "you can play m4 over the domV during 2-5-1" and demonstrates how great it can sound when musically applied, that's specific enough to me.
Then you hear: "but master, why?", "why does it work?".
In that case I agree with "who cares why?".

.

Sometimes you want to be more general and not more specific.

Good blues uses a lot of tension and release, but not indescriminate 'blues scales'. Say you are on a C chord (major triad) and you want a bluesy sound then you play lines based on Eb pentatonic. (You are borrowing from the parallel minor is one way to look at it). It will make C pentatonic stuff sound sweeter when you come back in.

Over a G7 in C you might choose to use the same idea and play lines round Bb7. You can describe this in different ways but it will give you a a flat nine and an augmented nine over the G (Bb and Ab). It makes the return to C major sweeter.

So in both cases you might want to consider that you are borrowing from the parallel minor.

Another case would be playing Fm over a C progression. Fm is the four chord in Cm. It is also a tone and a half up from Dm the standard two in C major. Fm6 is also the same notes as Dm7b5 which is the standard two chord in C minor. It will make the return to C major sweeter.

So instead of lots of different ideas in all these examples there is only one, pretend the chord you are playing over is up a minor third (C-Eb,G7-Bb7,Dm-Fm).


Use it over the one chord for blues, over the five for the altered sound and over the two for a gypsy sound. It is also a good way to look at things since building lines round these triads will emphasise the altered notes more when you want tension.

If you care about why these things work then you might get a whole lot more bang for your buck from each theoretical idea.

It works for chord substitutions too. Bartok had a lot to say about this, Conrad Corks book Harmony With Lego Bricks goes into this, I wish I hadn't given mine to a pupil.

PS you can do some very similar things in minor and get really nice lines............. If you care to.

D.