Practice Rythmn?

kongman91765

Hi.
I'm just a starting gypsy guitar player who just wants to get better at rythmn.
But how should I start practicing the rythmn?
Should I just play a bunch of chords with the la pompe style?
Or should I play a bunch of other gypsy tunes?

Please,
any opinions would be helpful.

Thanks.

Jim Kaznosky

For me, learning how to play rhythm is essential and you should continually spend quite a bit of time on it. I've been playing primarily rhythm for my group for about a year and a half and still learn daily. There are a few books and DVDs out there that can help you with the chords and the rhythm essentials. The best way to learn absorb this is to listen to the players and play songs.

Pick a few tunes without a lot of chords at first. Minor Swing seems to be a good place to start.

Once you feel comfortable enough with the style, start playing along with playalongs and records. I play along with records all the time to improve my rhythm and it has been the place where i make a lot of progress. Play with a metronome, if you have one, too. Always helps.

If there's a GJ Jam nearby, figure out what tunes the locals play, learn some of these songs, sit in, and listen to what the other guys are playing. Having a regular sit was where it really started to come together for me. While I really want to be able to blow like the rest of the guys in my sit, I've get kudos for being able to hold down the harmony behind them.

I still am learning and haven't nailed it by a long stretch. But it sure is nice when you start to lock in with recordings or live players any time.

Hope this helps.

BluesBop Harry

The books and dvds are great but if at all possible find a teacher...
Playing along with records that feature good rhythm is useful, listen as closely as you can. Playing rhythm to playalongs helps too.
Best,

jhanajc

Hi, I've been working hard on rhythm recently and I believe I've improved! To start with, I found it helpful to scrutinise my own rhythm in detail. The quickest way to do this is to seek criticism and advice from a good rhythm player or study a good book or DVD instructional to really break everything down to really look and listen for ways to improve your technique. You might need to really slow things down at first and take a couple of steps back before you can move forward.

I got myself a blank A5 ring-bound book and filled it with grilles for reference, soon you can commit chord changes to memory.

Aside from that, I compiled a playlist of GJ tracks, the GJ stars have excellent rhythm players. I choose mostly modern recordings rather than old hotclub records because of the sound quality. Discipline yourself to play along to them as if you are playing a gig! It's good fun, takes stamina! develops callouses on your knuckles! Try to sound like the rhythm player on the record. I sometimes use a metronome but find it a little dull and you have to go the distance with these tunes start to finish and get used to the common intros and lead-ins, listen for queues of when to finish! It's great practice.

At the moment I struggle to keep up with the really fast tempos for the duration of the tune like Limehouse Blues and China Boy for example. With my mp3 player I can slow down the tempo without affecting the pitch which is useful for building up speed. Other tunes I find difficult are the ones with constant chord changes such as Ultrafox, and Lollo Meijer's Step Swing for example. Again you can slow them down and speed them up with improvement.

Good luck! the world needs rhythm players! Jon

djangology

one thing that worked well for me in the beginning was getting together with a friend to jam and running a metronome while the both of us jammed. its a very enlightening experience...

kongman91765

Thanks everyone!
All your advices are really helpful!
I'm saving money to buy some rythmn books.
Until then, I will practice along with the records of django and other gypsy guitarist.
I will also use a metronome.
Thanks!

willb

Hi
Just remember what rhythm sound it is you want to acheive and learn how to produce it, sounds easy, but it's not.
Work on the RIGHT hand. Learning a bunch of songs and chords will not necessarily improve your rhythm playing.
Break everthing down to the very basics
Have alook at this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl56Mm_6EZg

Regards
Will

sketch

willb wrote:

Have alook at this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sl56Mm_6EZg

i would have linked this too. Many players don't actually practice the right way of doing it, and i find it very annoyng. You should practice this because without it you have no clue about rythm and axcents while improvising. I'm not very good either, but since practicing la pompe in the right way i started to improove a lot more than my friend which are not. The better soloist is quite often the better one at la pompe.

Bones

If you live in Buena Park you should take lessons from Gonzalo. I think he is in N. Hollywood.

He is a great rhythm player as well as lead and also really fun to take lessons from. He can save you a lot of wasted time by starting you off right.