I'm a beginner, please tell me. I am very glad to join you!

ChrisMartin

Agreed with the comment that a lot of the 'free' content on Youtube is put up by teachers, or wannabe teachers. And yes, we should all be grateful there is so much info to learn from. It is up to the individual to decide what sounds right to one's own ears to learn what one has in one's own head. By this I mean, even for a beginner we all need to have our own idea of what we want to play and sound like. If the answer to that is strictly pre-war Django, post-war electric Django, modern Bireli or Stochelo or there is a wish to copy closely one of these heroes then yes you can hone your technique to be a fine copyist. There are teachers who specialise in such copying. There has also been much discussion on here about the benefits of transcribing particular recordings and while it is a good way to train your hand-ear coordination the end result is you have just learned to copy again. Keep going though and the speed of learning by ear will benefit you later when you want to play what is in your head.

More importantly to get a full understanding of the style my advice to anyone is to go back to the beginning, the roots and start from there. It was said that as a kid Django was accompanying musicians on the streets of Paris playing banjo chords on popular songs of the day. At the same time he was exposed to all of the Gypsy traditions and hand-me-down tunes from the extended family. Later he discovered Louis Armstrong and jazz. What then became his sound, and led to what is now known as Gypsy Jazz now is what he continued to do with that mix of influences. Later he also absorbed classical influences too.

It is limiting your understanding if your start point is only Stochelo's (or Adrien's, or Tchavolo's) later recordings of any of the standards or Django compositions without an understanding of the heart and soul of where the original Gypsy Jazz style came from. Of course in this, I am not neglecting Baro, Matelot, Sarane, Oscar or the other contemporaries but the point is one needs to have a basic feel for all of the contributing forms, pop songs, gypsy tunes and jazz to fully understand what is going on.

From what I have read (there may well be exceptions) most of the gypsies learned just by copying at the feet of their elders, without too much thought given to any theory or written music. If you get a chance to watch the film 'Swing' the example of the kid trying to learn from Mandino and Tchavolo is probably typical, with many similar scenes repeated in the film 'Les Fils du Vent'.

As I said before there are as many teachers as there are students these days and all have their claim to your dollar, but at the same time they all have their own methods and often tend to take the attitude 'my way is the right way' and your technique is wrong. If the end result pleases your ear, and hopefully others too, then you are doing nothing wrong. Gypsy Jazz is a mix of musics that ultimately should be fun, it is not an Olympic sport to be judged accordingly.

So, my recommendation to get close to the true sound of Gypsy Jazz while at the same time having your own voice and not just be another anonymous imitator is to learn as much as possible about the sources and roots of the music, learn to play as much as possible by ear, (even if the repetition gets boring), learn the rhythm patterns and some basic chord shapes, and play until your fingers burn.