Gonzalo "How I Learned" support group...?

Lango-Django

Gonzalo, wonderful to hear from you! All of us here admire your playing so much.

(By the way, did you know that in English, it is considered impolite to write these e-mail postings in capital letters? English-speakers consider capital letters to be an indication of extreme emotion or anger--- which I am sure was not your intention!)

First of all, thank you for your books. They are such a banquet of ideas that I think a lot of us don't quite know where to start... there is so much there to learn, and we want to learn it all so quickly, that it is hard to just limit ourselves to learning a little bit at a time.

So now we're trying to figure out ways that we can learn your ideas in little tiny pieces and get them into our everyday playing, rather than memorizing your stuff and playing it as etudes...

I know this seems odd to you--- how can these doofuses be having trouble with something so easy?

But somehow, it IS hard for us doofuses, and we're talking about ways to make it easier!

Your student,

Will
from Malaga, Spain, where the sun is shining brightly and it is 18 degrees C.

Djangoslefthandman

I don't have the product (yet) but I'm finding this discussion very interesting. I posted the following elsewhere and thought it might be of interest.

Reference: Effortless Mastery - book by Kenny Werner

One of the many good points Kenny Werner makes is that a lot of people (e.g. me) play for years without much improvement. The root cause he identifies is the (internal) pressure to make progress. This leads to material being skimmed and ticked off the to do list without being fully absorbed and mastered. The "I should have got this by now" head voice leads you to move on before you have achieved "effortless mastery" of the material.

This leads to the situation where a player who at 20 is fluffing the bridge of Cherokee is still bluffing at 50 and will probably die without being able to navigate it.

The lesson that he draws from this is that people grossly underestimate the time/effort (regardless of talent) required to master a technique/skill to the point it can be deployed effortlessly . Consequently they never really master anything and remain dissatisfied with their playing.

The huge number of 'how to' gypsy jazz books/dvds merely adds to the pressure in my opinion. Also if you are gigging regularly the turnover of repertiore can lead to numbers being semi mastered.

His solution is to slow down, take the pressure off and take one step at a time. Go deep into the goal you are trying to master.

Daniel Coyle's book The Talent Code has the latest research on how world class performers reach that status. Well worth a read if you are interested. In a nutshell he suggests that you grow the ability (literally in terms of brain signal bandwidth) through extremely focused and extended (deep) practice. The material should make you feel uncomfortable and you try, fail, adjust, try, get nearer, adjust as a methodology. You also need a feedback loop - record yourself, sit in front of a mirror, film yourself, be part of a community etc

Hope this is helpful
Regards Ray
.

Elliot

What Ray said is exactly why I have avoided the typical kind of advice I've found suggesting one divides one's time between learning solos, rhythm, and songs to the detriment of developing one's chops in any direction.

gone

IMPOLITE??!!!!!

HAD I HAD YOU GUYS IN THE SAME ROOM I WOULD'VE SMACKED YOUR FRETTING HANDS WITH BALL END ARGENTINES UNTIL YOU PLAT THE LICKS SLOW ENOUGH AND A FULL SOUND

GB

blindjimmy

That is pretty much how my girlfriends grandpa "Chato " and his brothers were tought violin and cello when they were growing up in Mexico. As an adult, the whole town called Chato el Maestro . Perhaps Gonzalo's method is more effective than we care to admit.

Elliot

gone wrote:

IMPOLITE??!!!!!

HAD I HAD YOU GUYS IN THE SAME ROOM I WOULD'VE SMACKED YOUR FRETTING HANDS WITH BALL END ARGENTINES UNTIL YOU PLAT THE LICKS SLOW ENOUGH AND A FULL SOUND

GB

uh....huh?

Yes, the books are chock full of information, and what is there is very good, I wish more books had information of this type. I'll stop short of saying it is invaluable, what they contain, since I've just started with them.

However to be clear they are unpublished, low budget Kinko products, and the price they come at constitute the most expensive learning material I and probably anyone else have ever purchased. Not that it matters all that much, but showing pictures on the cover at the store that aren't really there gives the impression that they are books like the other books, and these are really pamphlets. But what bothers me is the quality of the sound on the second "volume"'s disc. It is terrible, and what's worse the rhythm guitar drags behind the beat, making the whole thing sound awful. A metronome is in order here. On the first one all you get is a few short video clips and a blank sheet of tab paper! For this amount of money I don't think it would have been asking too much to have made a decent run at putting out some quality here, but as I said the info is very good.

Bones

Personally, I like the home made look of these books. The information is all there (and then some). It's not a coffee table photo book. And I like that I'm getting something that was obviously done by Gonzalo himself (including the tab and dialog/analysis).

I'm sure it costs a lot more to have a nice full color cover, glossy pages and a publisher manufacture the books for you but I'm also sure that it is a very long and hard struggle to get a publisher to take on a project like that for the tiny little Djanophile market.

I'm glad we have access to the info that we have (glossy format or not). When I first started looking at this style it was before we had any of the books/videos that we do now.

Be thankful for any gems that the pros are willing to share.

adrian

Elliot wrote:

However to be clear they are unpublished, low budget Kinko products, and the price they come at constitute the most expensive learning material I and probably anyone else have ever purchased.

A $30 book/CD combo is the most expensive learning material you and "probably anyone else" have ever purchased? C'mon, now. That's a bit of a stretch.

I've learned more from the Gonzalo books than from any other gypsy jazz book, save "Gypsy Picking." $30 is well worth it, and the content is pure gold.

Adrian

klaatu

adrian wrote:

I've learned more from the Gonzalo books than from any other gypsy jazz book, save "Gypsy Picking." $30 is well worth it, and the content is pure gold.

Adrian

Same here. The value is in the content and method and not the packaging. After working with Gonzalo's first book for a while, I put all my other instructional books (and there were a lot of them) on eBay, except for the Michael Horowitz books. The only other instructional materials I use now are the Denis Chang videos, both his and the ones he did with Wawau and Stochelo.

Mark DS

Personally, I found that I also gained a lot by learning the solos as whole exercises. It really helped out my left hand, and I also think it's just good to be able to memorize long lines. The way I practice licks now is to set a metronome at the speed I think I can play it at for practice, then cut that in half (e.g., I think I can play it at 120 in practice, set it to 60). That's my actual practice speed. Sometimes maybe even lower. A trap that I sometimes fall into is speeding it up once I memorize how the lick goes. Maybe I can get it absolutely perfect 10-20% of the time, and one or two mistakes the rest of the time, but really it should just be perfect each play through. Also, as soon as I start to feel tension in my right arm, I know it's too fast.