Fapy Lafertin right hand position and pick angle: new video

McQ

I recently subscribed to Irene's Gypsy Jazz Adventures on YouTube after seeing her interview with Jokko Descendre of DjangoJazz Manouche Picks. Today I noticed some new videos all with "Sinti jazz camp" in the title, and one of them captures the almost player's-angle-view from over Fapy Lafertin's right shoulder. One gets an excellent look at the right hand position and pick position/angle.

McQ

Here's another recent video taken from the opposite shoulder, also showing a very good look at the angle of Paulus Schäfer's right hand, and including Stochelo Rosenberg.

NylonDave

There is a new trend in slowing down videos to see what people are doing with the right hand. All of these can be replaced by this sentence.

Put your pick on a string, decide where the pick should be after you play the note that comes next and then play that note in such a way as to get both the sound you want and have the pick land exactly where you want it in one motion.

If you understand this then you can save yourself hundreds of hours wasted trying to make the eye as fast as the hand.

Nothing wrong with watching fine players though, but everything you need to know is in the second paragraph and if you don't know that watching will not help.

D.

Buco

It was hilarious when Fapy pretended he's going to hit Paulus over his head with a guitar after Paulus played that fast run. Apparently Fapy is a stickler for too many notes for it's own sake kind of playing.

wim

NylonDave wrote: »

... All of these can be replaced by this sentence ... everything you need to know is in the second paragraph and if you don't know that watching will not help

When learning guitar (or learning any skill, really), different students may find different methods of teaching effective. Something that was helpful advice for someone else may not be useful for you, and vice-versa.

In music certainly, some people are visual learners, some are more kinesthetic learners, and some only need the ear. There's not a "one size fits all" approach.

Announcing for the world that "watching will not help" and "If you understand [my way] then you can save yourself hundreds of hours wasted.." strikes me as terribly arrogant and rude. If something was not useful for you, this does not necessarily mean it's useless for everybody!

That being said, we should try a variety of approaches and study with a variety of teachers - it's good to know what methods work best for yourself - so you can seek out the instructors who teach well in that style, and plan your own practice time to be as effective as possible.

NylonDave

Hi Wim, it's good to see you have strong feelings about what constitutes rudeness. I do too.

The evidence about different 'styles' of learning is in. People, it turns out have preferred routes for learning but they are not necessarily effective for them, or anyone else, when they are not geared to the task in hand.

I have noticed recently that there is a lot of really indepth and in my opinion distracting analysis of picking styles inviting people to look at slow motion videos. It think this approach is well worth avoiding and indeed mocking.

I think of it like dieting. The more advice the more confusion. Work out more and eat less works for EVERYONE regardless of preference. Two hours on the minutia of an individual playing one lick followed by another two on a different player avoids the central issue which is. Dont move your pick till you know exactly where it is going and put it there directly making sure that you like the sound you made.

People are free to keep looking for super picks and dissect videos all they like but I guess I am a stickler and I think it is worth pointing out that such activities are mostly avoiding the issue.

I note that people who wont accept the reality of weight loss are interested in the latest cutting edge superfoods and specialised advice and possibly the knowledge that they have a food allergy or thyroid problem. Well maybe they have mitigating circumstances and preferences. However 'eat less and work out more' actually works.

A magazine saying that however couldn't go on very long. So instead they go on forever offering conflicting advice to people too lazy to cook the food in the pretty pictures. It creates the illusion of learning while actually guaranteeing stasis, confusion and the inevitable binge. Chocolate digestives or youtube or thirty dollar picks.

Whether readers or viewers feel empowered by these distraction and temptations or not is in to mind utterly beside the point, morally speaking.

In terms of marketing I note that my advice profits me not at all. I guess a person with a different view of morality might pick their targets more 'carefully'.

D.

dennis

I have taught Gypsy Jazz technique to many people over so many years, from people who have just picked up the guitar, to people making transition from another style. Young people, old people, professional musicians, amateur musicians. Both in workshop formats (which only works for certain people) and in private lesson format (which works best for people who need more help)

I realize that there's no one right method to teach. What works for one doesn't work for another, and vice versa. Everyone has their way of learning, and in fact, I only stress the importance of sound before going into semantics of right hand. I also mention that ultimately everyone has their own technique. Matelo Ferret, Django Reinhardt, Bireli Lagrene, Stochelo Rosenberg, Yorgui Loeffler all use variations of the same technique, but they all have different ways of using it, some drastically different from the other.

For instance, Yorgui does a lot of upstroke sweep picking when playing fast. Stochelo consistently uses consecutive downstrokes. I've seen Matelo Ferret start new strings with upstroke ;-). Bireli has his whole hybrid thing, Django and Angelo Debarre seem to use the most common form of what we would consider standard Gypsy Jazz technique.

Ultimately, we have to figure out what sound we are looking for and then go from there.

If we have a good sense of observation, then it's usually easier to learn on our own. People like that can just attend one simple workshop and then figure everything out on their own from there, and even come up with the technique that works best for them

Then, there are people who have a lot of trouble observing little details, and these people need significantly more help. They don't benefit much from a one off workshop, they need constant monitoring and reminders of what to look out for. I've seen these people succeed though with regular daily/weekly help from a teacher. Most of the time these people are people who try to play too fast, instead of taking it extremely slow. I've seen it time after time, and I always have to remind students to take it as slow as their brain can process the information in such a way that they do it correctly. When I tell them this, they start out slow for 2 seconds, and then go back to going fast. I've had to do daily / weekly reminders to such people until it finally stuck! Sometimes we are naturally wired to want to do things a certain way (the wrong way), and we need so much more help than the people who naturally observe properly.

These are two polar opposite examples that I've encountered over the years, and then there is every possible combination in between.