My progress in the style - early developments

Gno Wan

My progress:

There doesn't seem to be a sepcific place to share your playing, so I figured this would be the closest given that I am a total newbie. I got Gypsy Picking for Christmas and am struggling to adapt to the new right hand style, and but dang it's hard, I really have a strong habit of using upstrokes on string changes.

Anyway, here's where I am at as a total beginner to the style:



I was a Ukulele player before I moved over to Gypsy Jazz guitar. You can see that I wasn't following Django's take on the song - I developed my own thing on the Ukulele before knowing the Django version, and just tried to Gypsy Jazzify it a bit. I was really tired, I recorded at 1 AM, and just posted the first take despite a string of obvious flubs, poor rhythm, problems with articulation, etc. The audio is the built in mike on the MacBook which isn't good, and the lighting made it look like I have a vein popping out of my head, but it is what it is. It's my first video, I had to make myself do it just to put myself out there since I have a bit of a phobia I need to overcome.

Thanks to Josh Gibson who sold me his Gitane DG-300, it's really a lovely instrument, and I am loving it, even if I often feel I am not worthy of it.

BTW, if there's a better place to put this, or if this kind of thing is just inappropriate for these forums, let me know.

[edit - repairing the typorama, every time I submit a new typo pops into view.]

Stackabones

I think you're off to a good start. The uke background is showing! And that's a good thing!! I've noticed that the uke community has a real fondness for chord-melody solos.

Gno Wan

Stackabones wrote:

I think you're off to a good start. The uke background is showing! And that's a good thing!! I've noticed that the uke community has a real fondness for chord-melody solos.

Thanks very much for your kind words. I swear that I actually do play better than the video shows. I'll need to record something with a real Mike at a time other than 1 AM to illustrate where I'm actually at.

It's really common for Ukers to use chord melodies single note melodies don't work out so well on an instrument with virtually no sustain. You can see that I favor the lower four strings a lot due to Ukeing.

The Uke online community is really good, it's similar to the Gypsy Jazzers - not a lot of egotistical one-upsmanship that can happen with other styles, the folks on this forum seem like great, positive people who really want to help others develop, which is very cool. As you can see from my join date, I lurked here a bit at times though I only bit the bullet and started trying to get things going recently.

Stackabones

I've arranged a few of the GJ rep for chord-melody solo and they can really be fun to play alone. But I haven't done it yet on uke ... though I've cobbled together a version of Minor Swing for uke. Anyway, keep up with the chord-melody solos in this style on the guitar.

btw, just got a Kala ARCHTOP tenor uke that I'm absolutely in love with. I've been playing it like crazy for the last week. I'm planning on putting it into my solo git/vox sets, soon-to-be solo git/uke/vox sets!


And, back to the guitar, check out this amazing chord-melody solo of Nuages by Romane.

Gno Wan

Since the Uke is often used to play Swing tunes, it adopts to the songs well, though of course the style's going to be a lot different. I'd like to try doing some recording using the uke. as a rhythm instrument with guitar leads.

Yeah, that Romane chord-melody solo is masterful.