soloing

klaatu

jkaz wrote:

klaatu wrote:

jkaz wrote:

I should make a trip up to Boston for a lesson.

You should. Jack's a great teacher.

Are you coming to Django in June?

I got permission to do so from the little lady if I could come up with the scratch. It would be either that or a new guitar if I can sell the guitars I currently have. I'm due for someone to correct my terrible habits and get me on the right track. Until then, there is Mr. Chang, this site, Django transcriptions, and you tube. I'm also due for a vacation. Hanging out with a bunch of dudes playing GJ for a week would be actually very therapeutic.

It is, actually. At least half the fun is the jam sessions and getting to meet a whole bunch of fellow nutcases who'll stay up all night playing this stuff. You don't get individualized instruction, but the groups are small, and you'll learn a lot. And the next time you come, you are reconnecting with old friends!

Jim Kaznosky

There is no doubt in my mind that this would be a lot of fun. I'm already losing sleep between thursday and friday morning to sit around with the jazzers in my band to play late after the restaurant is closed. This would be like that on Django steroids. Its all matter of money this year.

klaatu

If you can swing it somehow, you'll get more than your money's worth. The price is incredible, considering what you get - full days of instruction by great artists/teachers, room and board, all the jamming you can stand, a couple of great concerts, PLUS a couple of hours sleep here and there! I've been three times (had to miss 2008 because of a sailing trip around the Greek Isles, and missing DiJ nearly killed me), and can't wait to get back this year.

You also get to check out some of the finest gypsy guitars around. There are some beauties there every year, new and old, and everyone is happy to share their fine instruments. Watch out for Michael Bauer - he brings several of his wonderful vintage instruments for all to enjoy.

BluesBop Harry

HotTinRoof wrote:

Teachers are excellent to keep the student on track. But this early in the game stuff just needs to be memorized and learned. A teacher can help discern what's more important to concentrate on however the student needs to do their homework.

I'd say the earlier the better, as a lot of people left on their own will do things wrong and waste precious time and ingrain bad habits, which later have to be unlearned.
I'm a teacher myself and I wish students would come as soon as they start to think about playing gypsy jazz... it would save us all a lot of trouble...
How I wish I had access to a teacher when I first began! It wasn't until I went to France that I found out how to do things right... Still finding that out.
After a student has a solid foundation, then I would leave them to their own devices to keep growing.

Jim Kaznosky

Harry - I agree with you as I am uncovering problems in my technique after being on this path for a little while. The problem is that teachers for this style are either hard to find, inaccessible due to gigging, booked with students, or just distance.

rafapak

thanks guys for info!

Ando

I used to stink at soloing, just totally rattled no clue freak out STINK.

And you know, I still sorta stink. But now other people can't tell as much. In fact, some of them like what I play, despite the fact that I'll never really set the world on fire with this stuff. I do play with good tone, I can swing, and that gets anyone pretty far. Plus, with age, I realize that if a solo heads south, it's not the end of the world.

That said, I only began to improve when two things happened:

1. I started to learn one tune at a time, inside and out.

Man, what a waste of time as a soloist to learn a bunch of tunes and never really study any one of them in depth. If you really want to solo over a tune, take everyone's advice: learn the tune COLD. Memorize the changes! You can't create if your nose is in a book. Get a feel for how the chords form groups. And learn not just one way to play the basic chords, but move on to learning other ways of playing those chords, say with roots on different strings. This will help prevent you from ever becoming lost.

The melody? Actually, I've found that you rarely have to play the melody in different positions. Maybe learn it up an octave, so you're able to do that if you want. But by and large, just learn the damned melody in one way that is totally assured and confident. That's what people want to hear. Melodic confidence.

If there's one thing I learned that makes improvisation possible, it's this: learning chord shapes in *nearby groups.* The chords should be nearby each other so your fingers can find them easily. Soon you'll discover where some common chords shape pairs live relative to each other, and it will become a lot easier to visualize changing from one chord to another. A lot of soloing is dancing around these neighbor chord shapes as they change, so you have to study the fretboard to see where they are.

2. You can learn to solo only if you study how a given chord shape on the fretboard is related spatially to another chord shape on that fretboard, preferably nearby.

You know what is incredibly annoying? Anyone who tells you to learn one chord or arpeggio all over the fretboard. Why? Because a soloist has to improvise over chords that CHANGE over time, not over one chord or arpeggio in every possible position! Go here:

http://www.realisis.ca/calculators/fretboard.html

Fiddle around with that little online application. You will learn a TON.

To learn how chords are related on the fretboard for a given tune, print out maps for each chord spelling for each chord in that tune. Start with a minor blues: Gm6 Cm6 D7. Line up the maps by fretboard position. You'll see instantly how the chord shapes in the same (or nearby) fretboard positions live near each other.

Now put on the metronome and play through them as arpeggios in the order the chords change in the tune. After you're comfortable doing this without looking at the map, goof around with the rhythm of your phrases, but always in time. Try to make your phrases sound like your favorite players, or however you want them to, but the goal here is to *study proximate chord shapes.*

This is how you develop confidence. You learn where the damned chord shapes are, you dance through them with your fingers a million times, in time, and then you can get creative, find substitutions, and develop a personal vocabulary.

That fretboard calculator by the way is *really* useful for spotting substitutions that come from chord synonyms. Circling chord shapes helps you visualize these things in a way your fingers can use!

.01

One more thing: in this style, a lot of soloing is based around the index finger. When you're looking at chord shapes, keep that in mind.

MaxwellGarces

BluesBop Harry wrote:

HotTinRoof wrote:

Teachers are excellent to keep the student on track. But this early in the game stuff just needs to be memorized and learned. A teacher can help discern what's more important to concentrate on however the student needs to do their homework.

I'd say the earlier the better, as a lot of people left on their own will do things wrong and waste precious time and ingrain bad habits, which later have to be unlearned.
I'm a teacher myself and I wish students would come as soon as they start to think about playing gypsy jazz... it would save us all a lot of trouble...
How I wish I had access to a teacher when I first began! It wasn't until I went to France that I found out how to do things right... Still finding that out.
After a student has a solid foundation, then I would leave them to their own devices to keep growing.

i agree. i started playing by myself and was playing for a few months before anyone (Gonzalo) told me about the rest stroke and suggested that i was playing rhythm wrong. and then i had to start from scratch again. it was brutal. but i was glad it happened when it did. it would have been much more aggravating and disheartening had i been further down the road trying to figure it all out on my own. how do you think those dudes get so good? they learn how to play from everyone around them the moment they pick up a guitar. so they learn the right way from day one. i think (and i am biased because i love to teach and be taught) that having a teacher as earlier in the gypsy jazz game as possible is exponentially beneficial.