Joscho Stephan alternate picking?! La Gitana lick

cantzon

There are many good reasons to play different styles. When I was quite a bit younger I would practice to the point of burning out and then put the guitar down. These days I compartmentalize my study so that I study a bit of something and when I get burned out I study a different style. I found that when I started studying this way my playing improved in all areas. The human brain has enormous potential to absorb information. It's not like you learn one thing and it kicks out other information to make room for the new info.

There is also another very good reason to be versatile. I am a guitar teacher. I found that I was getting far more students that teachers who specialize in specific genres. I cn't begin to tell you how many students I got who defected from heavy metal guys.

Also if you are a giging musician you actually can make more money playing different styles. Elliot is right in the sense that guitar is also is trade. After giving it some thought I agree with him. My point, and the one I prefer to believe, is that more than that music is an art. But anyway, you can make more money playing different styles.

When I was back in South Carolina I played four different styles in one week- Nikita Koshkin the elves suite (classical), bluegrass with a local group, jazz fusion with John Blackwell on drums (he now plays for Prince), and a rock group.

It may be amusing to some of you to know that I made the least ($0) for the most difficult music...the classical. And the most- around $2000 for the crappy rock band where I just sat in asked what key and improvised off the top of my head.

Right now I really am enjoying listening to and studying gypsy jazz, but I seriously doubt I can make much money...at least here in Korea.

chip3174

cantzon quit typin' and start playin'

DrSnyder

Dear Forum-Members,

initally this post is asking about some key elements of Joscho's picking technique, which I want to say something about.

I talked personally to Joscho and I participated on one of his workshops. Whenever changing string he starts with a downstroke. Strangely on this youtube video, in slow he uses alternate picking while on performance speed he uses gypsy picking.

Regarding La Gitane (Joscho's version):

there is a lick that goes like this

e-----------------------
b----------------------
g--3 2 0--------------
d-------- 3 2 0--------
a----------------4----

Joscho plays this also not with alternate picking. For me in this case alternate picking is more easy to do at high speed.

dennis

a lot of people don't know what they do, that probably explains whyh joscho said what he said.... you can hear in his attack that he does a lot of alternate picking.. and the videos out there are proof enough..

it seems strange but it's very true that a lot of people aren't aware of what they're doing! I had the same thing going on when I was oding the wawau adler dvd...

DrSnyder

dennis wrote:

a lot of people don't know what they do, that probably explains whyh joscho said what he said.... you can hear in his attack that he does a lot of alternate picking.. and the videos out there are proof enough..

Really? I never see him doing alternate picking on most occasions except for glissando runs and very fast sixutplets. Regarding his attack. His tone is very clear and thick. Even unamplified with a cheap Cigano Guitar when playing with Frank Vignola.

DrSnyder

And regarding what Joscho said to me. Here is his message about the La Gitane Lick (see two posts above):

ich spiele die Stelle tatsächlich wie folgt.

Down, up, Down
Donw, up, Down
Down

Gruß
Joscho

DrSnyder

BTW, Denis, I saw ur lessons-clips on youtube. It's great it helped me to develop the rhythm. Even gypsy swing is possible to learn if some genius is able to break it down into small learnable pieces.

alina1616

I think there are two seperate musical examples up for discussion, one being the video of Joscho, and the other being a lick from the Angelo Debarre performance of La Gitana.
ciaweb

dennis

DrSnyder wrote:

And regarding what Joscho said to me. Here is his message about the La Gitane Lick (see two posts above):

ich spiele die Stelle tatsächlich wie folgt.

Down, up, Down
Donw, up, Down
Down

Gruß
Joscho

i'm not saying that he doesn't do what he says he does.. but in general you hear that his tone is quite different from say angelo or stochelo or tchavolo ...

that said, in the wawau dvd there was a situation like that where he was saying i'm playing DOWN UP DOWN DOWN UP DOWN.. when very clearly he wasn't ... i had to show him what he was doing...

when he played it slow he did down up down down, but when he played it fast, he did something entirely different!!

crookedpinky

Hi all, first up let me say a Merry Christmas to you all and best wishes for 2009

Dennis's last post reminds me of a story about Arnold Palmer. Years ago Arnold had a column in a local Glasgow newspaper, teaching people to play golf the Arnold Palmer way, using line drawings to illustrate posture along with a detailed description of how to do it - i.e. how to stand, hold the club, swing, hit the ball and follow through etc.

A few years later, when technology allowed, Arnolds playing was analysed by high speed camera and - guess what - the way he really played did not tie up with the way he thought he played. In other words many people had been trying to learn to play like Arnold Palmer based on his incorrect self analysis of the way he played.

The thing is how many people lost the enjoyment of just playing golf and enjoying it for it's own sake rather than pursuing the perfect technique - which actually didn't exist in the first place.

Best wishes and hope to see some of you in Samois 09
Alan