What is Django doing/thinking

littlemark

I've been looking at the Solo in "after you've gone" from Django's Rome sessions and I am not quite sure what he's thinking in a few places.

1. It seems he starts the Solo with a 2 bar cmaj scale lead-in. But he starts it 1 bar before the start of the chorus. Thus he finishes the scale on the down beat of the second bar of the chorus. I little weird but not crazy.

2. Throughout his solo he keeps returning to this enclosure riff around the c Maj chord. Bar 5-6, 21-22, 45-46. But he often uses this idea over a Gmaj, not C Maj. That's a little weirder. Basically, I see tonnes of ideas surrounding C Maj instead of G Maj. He even uses a C7/ dim lick in bar 15 over the G7 chord.

3.I get the feeling he thought the song was in c Maj instead of G Maj.

4. And because of the lead-in scale ending on bar 2 it feels like he's sometimes a bar late or early for chord changes. Like the A7 idea in bar 8(a bar before the A7). Or starting the B section on an F (really the end of the A Section) then in bar two really start the C Maj idea.

Am I was of base? Is the song in C? It's Django just that hip? Is there a Jazz explanation for playing the IV instead of the I? Or did Django mess up but still manage to sound good?

I look forward to hearing thoughts/theories or explanations.

wim

Are you sure it's not you that got confused? After you've gone Rome sessions version IS in key of C (first chord F)

littlemark

Oh thank God!! That makes so much more sense. *Sigh of relief*. The world makes sense again.

Russell Letson

There are bunches of tunes that start on the IV chord before getting around to the I (the tonic). Old folkies are likely to have encountered this in "Scotch and Soda," which many of us thought was in the un-folky key of F because it not only starts on the F but goes to the B-flat for the second chord. It took me a long time to be hip enough to say, "It starts on the IV and goes to the IV-of-the-IV before getting to the actual tonic."

Jim Kaznosky

That's a great pretty straightforward solo that is great for technique and has some interesting elements, as well as the timing challenges.

h24015

I'm sitting here shaking my head Russell - a version of that song (that Bob Shane performed solo) has been given a "gypsy" treatment on my next CD. Maybe it is not as under the radar as I thought!

Russell Letson

This is sideways of the original poster's subject, but it turns out that Shane played "Scotch and Soda" pretty much in cowboy-chord territory--at least he does in the much later videos I've seen. Back in the Folk Scare days, we didn't have such visual aids, and in any case there was that pesky B-flat. (Shane plays it only on the top strings-and of course on the 1958 recording he had a bass player to hold down the bottom.) I also recall that there was endless speculation about the intro chords, which to this day get rendered in all kinds of ways on the internet. (It turns out that this can also be fingered entirely on the first five frets--and only the pinky reaches up for the A on the first string.)

(BTW, you want perversity--the old Real Book arrangement sets the song in E-flat.)