Bireli Book Review

MichaelHorowitz

From Greg Gunther:

the new Bireli transcription book gives us a glimpse into the dazzling guitar playing of Bireli and exemplifies many quintessential aspects of the gypsy jazz guitar style. a great selection of tunes from all three gypsy project cds, that demonstrate Bireli's inventive solo playing, melodic lines, long solo phrases, asymmetric motive fragments ect....
its easy to read and appears to be fairly accurate. the book has guitar chord boxes to indicate the changes. all in all its a good book, which gives us some insight to Bireli's great playing. gadjogreg gunter

WowBobWow

This is indeed a very cool book. I like the way it has the intros and outros of the tunes as well. My one complaint is I feel that the fingerings can sometimes be on the awkward side. I have seen bireli play several times and I know he can do just about anything, but the fingerings for some of the phrases seem awkward to execute.
I wish the book had suggested fingerings (for example like Unaccompianied Django or other Horowitz books which makes a big difference to me!)

Then again, there are still endless riffs and lots of intense material in this book that are pleasing to the avid lagrene fan. I have been spending a few hours at coffee shops analyzing the solos and it is great to see what lagrene is doing and how amazing his phrases and uses of rhythm propel his solos along--he is a true master of jazz! Also with the standard notation above the tab it is a great text for other instrumentalists--violin, accordion, clarinets, etc to absorb the material.

I hope they release a sequel text because there are many other songs from the gypsy project albums I wished they would have done as well.

SF,CA