New to gypsy jazz and small clip (Gallato RS1939 D hole)

arathorngr · March 2010

Ok, i try to learn the gypsy jazz style 3 weeks now. I play electric guitar for almost 3 years.
This is a clip recorded with my new Gallato RS1939 Angelo Debarre D hole... I love it so far, but then, i have no other gypsy guitar experience to compare it with.
Any comments/ suggestions would be of great help!
Thank you in advance

arathorngr · March 2010

Not a single reply...guess it was horrible

Matthias Lenz · March 2010

arathorngr wrote:

Not a single reply...guess it was horrible

far from it, dude

seriously, there´s nothing horrible to it. Hard to tell why noone responded before, but you shouldn´t take it personally. At least you have one response now, and here´s what I think :

The Gallato sounds very nice, I think you´ve made an excellent choice. This guitar should serve you well for years to come

As far as the playing is concerned, it´s really not bad at all, so don´t be disencouraged. It just shows that you´re a not-so-experienced player, and that can´t be expected after such a short time, especially in this genre. It takes time to build up vocabulary for improvising well, and I can hear you already collected some in the rock genre : some pentatonic licks and scale-based ideas. Those are okay, but in this style arpeggios are the preferred approach.
There´s a good book that explains the arpeggio approach very well. "Getting into Gypsy Jazz Guitar" by Stephane Wrembel. Very nice book, and you can put quite some time in working through it, which will get you a few steps further already.
And sure, you should have a copy of Michael Horowitz´s "Gypsy Picking"...it´s THE essential guide for the picking technique, which is one of the key elements to play this style.

Both these books are affordable, and in combination they´ll provide a good solid fundament to build upon.

So much for my 2 cents. Congratulations on the Gallato guitar, and keep on playing, dude !