Fast Chromatic Runs

Buco

If you can play Chet Atkins stuff than you can play this stuff.

Which by the way, back in '09 I went to Nashville to CAAS festival (Chet Atkins appreciation society) to see Joscho Stephan. Figured I'll watch his concert and spend the rest of days checking out Nashville. Once I saw and heard the level of musicianship among these people, I never left the hotel save for one time for lunch in the city. My mind was blown away at every corner. This was before I went to my first Django in June and I've never seen anything like it in my life. They would pretty much take over this hotel and morning to late night you'd have classes, workshops, concerts, jams... guitar virtuosity like nowhere else. So one of these episodes where my mouth was wide open and my eyes widened (and it just some random guy trying out the guitar that was for sale) I turned to my friend and said, half joking/half serious/100% ecstatic: "man I'm gonna move to Nashville and put in 10 thousand hours in two years and just live and breathe guitar!!". And the guy heard me and lifted his head and said in monotone voice: "and then you're gonna starve like the rest of us".

BrettN

Haha Buco…..I had every intention of getting over there for a CAAS one time but teaching and now COVID just somehow prevented me! I remember first learning to get the whole independent thumb thing going like Chet and those guys was just so hard at first…learning to play with a thumb pick etc. -all that stuff takes a lot of honest practice to do it well-but I just loved it so much I was prepared to do it. Plus I was younger! Lol That stuff is easy now simply because I just kept doing it, over and over again. I still think Chet was a hell of a guitar player- it’s incredible the volume of work he amassed, how quickly he could work up arrangements and how quickly he could get some of those really difficult tunes (the Jerry stuff) under his fingers! His touch and command were amazing.

For me the GJ is another level again. With the Chet stuff I was essentially just learning arrangements-he’d done the work for me! Whereas to play Gypsy Jazz well you gotta know not just the harmony but what can work over it! It’s Jazz you know- so it should ultimately be a creative endeavor! Man I’m a long way away from being able to do that as well as I’d like!!

might go and look at some more guitars again! ;)

billyshakes

https://djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/107459#Comment_107459

Buco, regarding your half to tempo method, there is always this extreme method describing how Rachmaninoff worked on pieces. The Irish Times refers to a snail...this sounds a bit more like a glacier!

https://www.irishtimes.com/culture/music/the-rachmaninov-method-practise-like-a-snail-play-like-a-gazelle-1.4012834

JSanta

I don't have much to contribute to this, but I am incredibly thankful for the knowledge and talent on this board. I've been struggling with the chromatic runs at tempo near the end of the Minor Swing solo for far too long, and the discussion here has been enlightening.

Buco

@billyshakes sometimes I'll go to quarter and start there. But this excruciatingly slow method that article is talking about is actually very hard to execute correctly.

V-dub

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/107448#Comment_107448

Thanks for the words of encouragement @buco .

My philosophical perspective on practice is that when I reach the limits of my physical ability and no amount of hammering on the task is getting me further, it's sometimes best to move on to something else for a while then revisit somewhere down the line. Sometimes the answer comes from other sources or growth in other places and I'm often surprised at what becomes easy later in my development.

It's usually quite clear when something is out of my grasp, and I can tell that some difficult passages come very naturally to others. I'd bet many top tier gypsy jazz players could nail this without much practice at all. That usually tells me there's something else blocking me and not them, and I need to go searching from it.

That and there are only so many hours in the day. In my experience concentrating on your own voice and overall fluency is usually better time spent.

And yes, my name is a nod to Volkswagon, but VW also happens to be my initials :)

Buco

Ah that's pretty cool man, with the user name, nice word play. I drive a 1st gen R32. Still lot of fun.

Everything you said makes sense. And I now have a completely different picture. I'm glad I asked actually, lots of good stuff in there. I do the same when working on something and it's not coming together, I just leave it and move on. But then come back to it after a while. Lot of times when I do, it's actually further along that where I left off. Many times I feel there's "practice" happening after I put the guitar down.

Well now all I played for the last two days is Choti, I'm completely hooked. Not at Stochelo's tempo but fast enough to play on the stage. Actually what I mentioned before about me chipping away on Olli's solo over Made for Wesley on and off for 3 years, made this song very manageable. There's a similar middle section run in Olli's solo. It paid off being a little stubborn. Such great composition though, another display of Django's genius.