Would Joscho be considered a legend?

wim

Heh, I know exactly the video you are talking about! Joscho misses a lot of cues, including a nod to the bass player for a solo. There is zero communication between them, he's off in his own world. Gonzalo looks noticeably annoyed.

jonpowl

This one: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1l_djXBrKTU

Buco

It always seemed to me that he caught the nod but didn't realize it was towards the bass solo. If you look at the exact moment, Gonzalo is soloing and the song is coming to the top, they look towards each other, Joscho figures that means he's done and puts his head down and picks up the solo but Gonzalo continues turning his head towards Brian. Then Gonzalo yells YO and Joscho misinterprets that one and starts trading 4s.

Bones

Well, like it or not, at the tempos that these great players play at, flash and licks are part of the genre. Technical facility is also de rigueur. At that level I always hesitate to compare one player vs. another but rather appreciate the similarities and differences. This seems like somewhat of a "golden age" for this genre and Joscho is definitely one of the top players.

Buco

It's always one of the more interesting topics for me, how much do the players improvise vs just building a puzzle from precut pieces?

I was in the class with one of the instructors at Django in June, monster player. And the guy said straight out, "I don't improvise, these are mostly licks that I got good at stitching together" and "Angelo is a true improviser". Another instructor said after we jammed on a song during the class, "that really fast lick I played? That wasn't improvised, you can't come up with something like that in the moment, that's something I worked on so I can throw it in when I want to".

I do feel that Joscho is relying, more than others in the very top, on pieces which he can pull from his puzzle box on the fly to create a picture rather than taking a brush and colors to paint. And you don't get to that point of ultimate artistic freedom without going through all the other phases.

I was surprised when I was in this museum and they had the pencil sketches by young Picasso. Like, human faces and such. And they were all so perfectly realistic and so impeccably good. It was a big eye opener for me and maybe it's a "duh" moment but I was like "hey, even Picasso had to master the basics first before he could create Guernica!".

That's not to say Joscho is still mastering the basics, gosh no, I'm just riffing. He's a fully developed musician and it's how he chooses to express himself. It's all subjective and in the end you either like it or not. He's not the only player who's immediately recognizable. And what is it that's a dead giveaway when you hear such a player? The phrasing, pure tone, licks you heard before...? Probably all of the above, including recycled material.

MikeK

I've tried to hold my opinion back on this, but I can remain silent no longer. There have been so many top-shelf gypsy jazz guitarists since Django (and I think we would all agree that Joscho resides solidly on that shelf), but to me, there's Django (the legend) and then there's everyone else. He's the only one, in my view, where pretty much everything I've heard him play sounds true inspired, like magical beauty, created on the spot. I'm sure some will disagree, and I'm opened to being pummeled here for my viewpoint on the matter, but that's the way I see it and hear it.

Stringswinger

What MikeK said. There is Django and everyone else is derivative.

JasonS

Theatrics and licks have always been a mainstay of the genre, just as they have been in American jazz.

Bones

Interesting discussion.

Not being an expert soloist, I've always wondered what exactly is "improvising". If you think of licks as words and you string them together into sentences is that part of "improvising"?

No one makes up their own words or even grammar on the fly. Or is that a bad analogy?

So where is the line between "licks" and pure on the spot creativity especially at very fast tempos?

Of course Django is our hero but we know he had many patterns and techniques that he repeated and used to great effect and was a master of tweaking the same pattern to make it sound completely new and unique. But beyond that how much of even what he did was "pure" on the spot improvising. For that matter, by some people's definition, does anyone really purely improvise at 250+ BPM? I'm not saying that they don't, but I'm just curious since that tempo is way out of my realm. And if they do, what percentage of a solo is pre-learned "licks" versus "pure" improvisation (whatever that is).

Buco

Well if you take the language analogy, then it's all about how expressive are you, are you sounding like you're a customer service rep reading the script or a gifted public speaker.