Learning and playing by ear?

Mark DS

Is this just a ridiculous task to set out on for learning gypsy jazz? Am I eventually going to have to sit down and go through all the scales, arpeggios, and theory? Do players who grew up learning this music like Stochelo, Angelo, et al have theory backgrounds or are they just playing?

asd123321

The main foundation is arpeggios, not music school type theory. Just play 5 to 8 hours a day for a few years. Actually there are repititious tricks that are not that hard to learn.

V-dub

Most of the Gypsy players have no background in traditional music theory. That being said, it doesn't mean they don't have their own way of organizing things. They probably just don't know what name those musical ideas are known by in the theory sense.

I always say the best way to get up to speed on any kind of music is to transcribe, transcribe, transcribe. You'll start to see the patterns and be able to discern them. Knowing arpeggios doesn't mean anything until you hear them in the music.

Oh and 8 hours a day for 6 months is a decent start.

Ampsmasher

Don't forget to get the gypsy le pomp down to!

Mark DS

I guess the key is just to have some means of organization. Generally when I think of soloing I think in terms of individual notes, but I guess that's just my classical background talking, and my solos end up sounding very classical. I think I'm starting to see the advantage of thinking in things in terms of blocks, which I could see making that really fast playing a lot easier. Thanks guys.

frater

IMO it all comes down to listen listen,listen. You have to imbue your unconscious with Django's phrasing. Then get Transcribe and learn the themes of the songs at 50% of the speed (get also S.Wrembel's backing tracks on his site). Then start improvise also at 50% of the speed. Try to sing with your guitar, don't go fast, don't activate the automatic pilot mode. Basically, do like the gypsies have always done... with not so bad results, I would say.

Mark DS

Yeah, I guess that is basically my biggest fear when confronted with theory or just learning bunches of arpeggios: automatic pilot. Always playing by ear and just making the sounds of the guitar as natural as making a sound with my voice seems like the best way to avoid this.

Salieri

Before 2-3 months, something like this, I started to learn from Stephane Wrembel's book to improvise, a lot of arpeggios, scales etc...it's helpfully, but since I started to learning Django solos by ear I evolved very very much at improvisation. So...my opinion is that: When you finished to learn a few arpeggios, preffered basic arpeggios and a few scales, like at arpeggios, start and transcribe many solos ! How much you can ! For example, I learn minimum 1-2 Django solos per day. After finished a solo and try to improvise, you will see the differences . I'm not expert, but I told my "beginner opinion"

And, about theory, I saw on a site (I can't remember the name) that almost all gypsy jazz players like Django, Stochelo, Bireli don't know a lot of theory, but they know shapes, arpeggios, scales etc...However, I think that Stochelo, Bireli etc learned to improvise by learning Django solos by ear (I saw this about Bireli on a blog, as he was young, learned a lot of solos)

I hope that this post is good.

Stefan.

Mark DS

What scales were most helpful for you guys? Should I be working on all major, minor, melodic minor, harmonic minor, etc. or are there scales unique to gypsy jazz?

djangology

im no expert either, but you should learn a slightly different set of arps and scales than the standard jazz player learns.

here is a very unofficial list :

1. basic triads + stacking patterns (to derive whole arpeggios) !!!!!
2. minor6 + min7b5 + maj9 patterns
3. major6, major 6/9, and minor 6/9 patterns
3. diminished arpeggio patterns (add leading tones to derive the complete scale)
4. dom 7th scales and add dom7b9 to that.
5. whole tone, pentatonic, and augmented (if you want to)
6. tri-tone dom7 subs
...

Captain Swing

I'm a big believer in developing your ear. It may take longer than using shortcuts like tab etc, but the long term benefits are huge.
It gets easier the more you do it. I used to practice 8 to 12hrs a day in the first few years, just replaying the record or tape over until i got what i wanted.
Now my ear is pretty good. I'm not saying i can instantly replicate anything i hear, but it's a helluva lot quicker than if i had to wade through tab. I find tab very laborious. Probably because i've never really used it.
I'm also a believer in trying to do something of your own with the music. Even if it's not awesome technically. So long as it swings & sounds ok, You will get better & better over time if you keep practising, & you'll develop something that's unique to yourself. There's nothing more dull after a while than getting involved in a jam & having to listening to someone churn out Django's solo to Dark Eyes or I'll See You In My Dreams (for example) again. It's great, but we've heard it all before a thousand times. I'd rather hear what the individual player brings to the table, no matter what level or standard they perceive themselves to be at.