Two fingers

Simonius

I've been thinking about this for a while and I'd like to hear your opinion. There's no doubt Django had great knowledge of the music he played and his tone, articulation and picking style are all fantastic. But it's all been overshadowed by the fact that he only had two fingers that were fully functioning (and the thumb ofcourse).

When I play Django's solo's myself I don't really have any trouble playing them with Django's fingering, in fact it sounds fairly good and natural to me. There's no real increased effort involved. People who don't play guitar (or hardly) are always amazed by the story. They think that if Django only had two fingers instead of 4, his ability to play must have lowered by 50%. To me that's nonsense. Django was a magical musician but the fact that he played with two fingers is fairly uninteresting to me.

Playing Django's solo's with my index and middle finger is a piece of cake. Playing Django's solo's with the same character, tone, vibrato, articulation.. I'm a million miles from that. That's the wonder of Django.

What I'm saying is: I think that if he had 4 fingers, I doubt he could have done more, should have done more, and would have done more.

MichaelHorowitz

I agree....I don't think the extra fingers would have much of a difference for Django.

frater

Agreed but it's also true that the "Django style" was developed to overcome the limitations of his left hand...