Arpeggios

RayIan

I've been at this Django style music for about 9 months now. Up until then I was strickly a pentatonic style solo player. Now I'm working hard to learn all the arpeggios and variations. So I'm wondering, do you get to the point where you can grab the arpeggios as fast as you can grab the chords? I mean, do you get to the point where you can sit down with a new chord chart and improvise over the changes with arpeggios as fast as you can pick up the rhyhm part.

marciero

What you might want to play over a given chord is dictated by its context, that is, the cadence or progression containing the chord. Since most jazz tunes, particularly in this style, share a common lexicon of cadences and progressions, this is not as difficult as it seems. I'm not saying that I can do this, btw. If I can be so bold, I would say that if you get ii-v under your belt in all keys, you are 95+% of the way there!

What do the experts say (I'm not)-Dennis, et. al.?


I think it's important to remember that scales and arpeggios are just the raw materials for improvisation, and not an end in themselves. One of the reasons I was drawn to this music was that I was sick of playing the same scales and linear patterns. I wanted to break out of the scalar/modal way of thinking. By the same token, I don't want to be thinking arpeggios when I improvise.

mike

langleydjango

RayIan wrote:

do you get to the point where you can sit down with a new chord chart and improvise over the changes with arpeggios as fast as you can pick up the rhyhm part.

Yes. It's just a matter of practice (and to a lesser degree-tempo:).

troy

Spike's Big Adventure

The best arp book in my opinion is also one of the simplest; grab Ian Cruickshank's "The Guitar Style of Django Reinhardt and the Gypsies", from there build up. Have fun.

Jim

CalebFSU

I really like the Stephene Wrembel book and L' Esprit Manouche for arpeggios

djangology

Up until then I was strickly a pentatonic style solo player

If this is true then you would get a kick out of comparing the Maj6/9 arpeggio with the pentatonic minor scale. They are nearly similar (good subs for each other). It might give you some insight on how to drop the pentatonic thinking and pick up arpeggio thinking without giving up what you already have learned... John Jorgesons book can also give you insight on how to approach playing from that point of view.

Use this scale calculator:
http://www.ushimitsudoki.com/scalculator/scalculator.html

I would learn the following in this order if I were you:
1. The maj6/9 arp + pentatonic minor (see the song Coquette)
2. The minor 6 arpeggio (see the song Minor Swing)
3. Diminished patterns
4. then search for where these 3 intersect each other and how they fit into diatonic harmony

My advice only has a certain amount of milage though. I dont spend enough time transcribing and I am not able to play completely "IN" like I should (probably because my ideas are hacked). At least nobody else sounds like I do. LOL