Denis Chang iReal Pro Fakebooks

Buco

You know, they're all valid approaches. I personally never did the all 12 keys thing, it sounds so overwhelming to me and I feel like it would take so much time. Well, I did practice major scale in all 12 keys and then all the modes for quite some time. I think though, either way you choose, you'll arrive at the same place eventually as long as you're working on it. If you learn a variety of songs they'll take you around the neck and a lot of chord movements and harmony they make will be the same. So eventually you'll be able to recognize that. I think it's important to look at the chords relationship when learning a new song. As long as you know songs in C-F range where you mostly play 5th string root chords and then G-B where you mostly play 6th string root chords and you understand how chords in particular song relate to each other, you can start transposing on the spot. Of course it'll take time and practice and you shouldn't wait for a gig to start doing it.

Jim Kaznosky

For sure. The reality is that many of the songs in this style are in a handful of keys. As an approach to this style alone, I don't think it is completely necessary. I've heard folks advocate for learning items in three or four keys as you'll also get there eventually. I completely agree with this approach. If you worked solely in C, G, D, F, E, and A, you'd be very well served. And to your point, the role of rhythm is very unique to early jazz styles, including this one. If you understand basic harmonic movements, and I mean really understand them, you'll do very well. I started working on flatpicking a few months ago and most of those fiddle tunes are in a few keys. To get by in that music, it would be almost madness to try to work things out everywhere, but I'm kind of consumed by madness and do it anyway.

To further your point, the repertoire is mainly in agreed upon keys. If someone calls Dark Eyes, no one is asking "what key?" And to this point, I'd completely agree that if we agree that it is almost always in Dm (F) , there would be limited benefit to learning this particular progression everywhere in 99% of the times.

I put Denis's posts in two boxes. There are posts specific to GJ and there are posts that are more global in nature. I also think that Denis speaks to Denis's experience and his understanding of how he learns. He appears to chunk information to learn and is really good at it. I'm not. If I'm running lines or an idea the first or second time I'm practicing said idea, it might take me to the fourth or fifth key to get it down and understand how and why that idea works. If I'm running it through the cycle, I have a pretty good idea of how it works. So that is me advocating for the 12 key approach because I'm a dense stoner as one reason.

The other thing that took me a while to grasp is that this picking style, should we choose to dive into it, really defines the fingerings of phrases. Rest stroke favors down strokes definitely when changing strings but also to emphasize certain parts of a phrase depending on where they lie on the beat. At least that's my take. It's akin to the flatpicking "rules", as I was talking about above. Not necessarily alternate, but beat reliant.

I'm in agreement with @Buco up to here. There is enough going on in this music to explore and to work on for lifetimes and you can get a deep understanding of the music without going through the effort.

I could go on and on about my experience, but I think the key is that this is my experience. I find it to be a worthwhile effort, but I agree that it isn't necessary. I just want to be (a) hirable as my gigs are drying up and (b) be ready for the inevitable "I hate that key" from a jazz guy if I'm on that kind of gig. The biggest reason is that I initially dove deep into this music because I love Django and I felt like it would be a really good challenge to learn my instrument and music a lot better than I knew prior to. Now I'm into the Barry Harris thing, playing some straight ahead, but still come back to this. I look at it as a tool, not a rule, and a tool that can help me not get caught flat-footed now that my safety net of being the second guitar is gone.

I am also a lifelong nerd. Maybe that's the real reason.