Which instructional course for lead has real world examples?

constantine · August 2008

I have studied courses from mehlig, jorgenson and wrembel. There all good, but for example the Wrembel course shows you like 1000 arpeggios over different chords, but very few correlations to actual songs. I realize the importance of these excercises but am also looking for a course that mostly applies techniques to specific django songs. Your input is highly appreciated.

Joli Gadjo · August 2008

Next step is to learn licks, or to invent your own over the play-along tracks.
Tchavolo Schmitt plays tons of them, and tunes like Django's Dark Eyes and Blues Clair are full of it.
Try to see how these licks relate to your arpeggios.

There's a lick section on the forum, there are some in the Wrembel book.
Mickael has a book with some, as well as Andreas Oberg and Robin Nolan, I am sure Dennis Chang left a minegold of licks in his DVDs and Yann has some on his website :
http://www.serendipity-band.com/misc/ma ... ans-en.htm

Stackabones · August 2008

I'd think that the best thing to do is to just learn a bunch of tunes. Learn tunes and then start applying the licks. Bake the cake, and then put the icing on it.

Matthias Lenz · August 2008

Hi constantine,

Here are my recommendations :

1. Gypsy Picking by Michael Horowitz

Generally the best tutorial on playing lead when it comes to "proper" technique. Not a vast amount of real life examples, but I personally wouldn´t want to miss the great insight into the fundamentals of playing in this style. It´s great to have this together with the Wrembel book.

2. L´Esprit Manouche by Romane & Derek Sébastian

this one is a tome (over 300 pages), it is full of exercises, theory lessons on harmony, and includes a lot of full length transcriptions (13 songs) from real life Romane recordings(also included on the CD that comes with the book).
The translation is sometimes quite funny, and of course, it is almost exclusively about Romane´s compositions (except for "Montagne St-Genevieve"). But if you work through this big thing, you´ll have a lot of real life examples under your fingertips. I think this is what you´re looking for...

3. Unaccompanied Django by Michael Horowitz

21 detailled transcriptions, mostly Django solo recordings, also some Stochelo Rosenberg solo tunes...all the book is real life examples, and the transcriptions give good advice on fingering and picking directions. Also quite a thing to work through, I´d say. Depends if you´re interested in learning solo-guitar pieces in this style...

I hope this is valuable information to you.

Best wishes

Matthias

BluesBop Harry · August 2008

http://www.hyperhipmedia.com/HM0011.html
it's what your looking for!!!
I also suggest the Gypsy picking and Gypsy fire books.

constantine · August 2008

wow this is a great forum!

steven_eire · August 2008

One book that doesn't get mentioned often here but is great, is daniel givone's book. it's got a lot of great licks in it and they are shown in the context of different chord changes.