everyone is better than me

voutoreenie · March 31

@Buco So I took zoom lessons with Antoine a couple years ago with a primary focus on technique and despite the limiting format, he immediately identified a few flaws for me to hone in on; first was eliminating extraneous right hand movement and building consistency in both lead/le pompe in terms of playing primarily through shoulder-to-elbow vs. a lot of elbow-to-wrist as I had been - I have a 6'7-6'8 wingspan and previous to hearing Antoine's advice, I was "locking" my my arm a bit too rigidly to the guitar body, if that makes sense. Antoine, while also immediately acknowledging how I'm a bit more physically "unique" from a lot of players due to the wingspan (haha), made a big point of showing me why it's important to "free" the arm more because projection originates primarily from your shoulder (and also to show me how not being so locked/anchored to the body allows you to adjust timbre by freeing your arm up more so you can choose to attack the strings from neck downwards instead of being so locked/anchored to only near the bridge - he's pretty huge on using that timbre-control capability).

For Antoine, your picking attack should be exactly the same whether playing single notes or full chords, which is something I'm pretty sure most professionals will tell you as well. And while power can effect projection, it's far more based on the precision of your attack, or rather keeping it short, precise and consistent. That's what I've really focused on over the past 2-3 years now, maintaining consistent projection regardless of how fast or slow I'm playing and achieving that through an also consistent picking attack...which is again derived by going shoulder-to-elbow.

Antoine also brought up learning a few Django solos note-for-note, in particular All of Me; in fact, he said Django's solo in All of Me is where he got the vast majority of his GJ repertoire for lead and that he basically just extended out from there when he was first learning.

As for practicing in 20-30 minute increments, he brought it up but since I was already practicing like that, we didn't spend too much time on it aside from him also asking, what are any of us really learning anymore after 30-60 minutes of it? As in lengthy practice sessions can quickly becomes a case of diminishing returns...not sure I completely agree but I do get it (and since I already practice like that anyway, who was I to question him? hahaha).

Anyway, that's pretty much all I can remember but it was totally worth it, seemed perfectly timed/aligned for my level because at some point, I'm not sure we can keep improving/leveling up without some degree of professional instruction and/or having a better player provide input/criticism/advice...which may not always fun to hear but you gotta try your best to remain humble as possible with all this too, I think. And before I finish this ridiculously longwinded post, I think that's something that's so frustrating for people getting into GJ, there just aren't a lot of teachers outside of youtube/DC music/Hemert/Robin Nolan/etc. I myself am fortunate enough to have had a few local mentors to learn some of this from but at the same time, they're all on this journey too, just at different points in it.

Scoredog · March 31

On my journey from the beginning to quite a few years in I’d figure out any line I’d come across and work it in “somewhat” into my playing. Not totally committed to the line not working it in for hours upon hours, so I learned a lot of the vocabulary but really could not use it when the pressure was on (pressure of course self inflicted). I figured that if I was going to be great I had to learn everything all the great guys are doing but soon realized a lot of of the great guys played a few things really well and that was good enough to sound terrific, they didn’t need to do everything.

I studied with Gonzalo privately one on one and eventually online and one of the most important things I learned was actually inadvertent. We were playing and I played this line and he goes “what’s that?” and started to figure it out but after 20 seconds gave up. I figured he gave up for one of three reasons and possibly all three, one it was my lesson time, two is the line really worth the effort and three working on your own sound is better time spent than rehashing someone else’s stuff. That said I’d still love more Gonzalo naturally in my playing, I still have to work at putting Django, Gonzalo etc into my own playing but my own stuff is more natural for me. I’m still self conscious playing Gypsy Jazz but I have found stuff I have created easier to use in pressure situations.

Buco · April 1

Exactly. That's why I say you do yourself the best. I've seen a similar thing. At Django in June, in the class with Dennis. Another teacher had a free period and came to join the class. I won't name names but he's at the very top of the genre. Dennis was showing something and he didn't know whatever Dennis was showing. But what was really eye opening, he didn't immediately get it under his fingers when Dennis started breaking it down. He was a student, just like everyone else in the room. He was looking down at the fretboard trying to navigate his fingers around it. That was the biggest lesson I took away from there.