How important is "minimum movement"?

adrian

I just came across the following YouTube video, which is an exercise for "minimum movement" in the fretting hand. The guy makes a point of criticizing playing technique in which the fretting fingers fly far away from the fingerboard between notes.



My question is -- how important/relevant do you think this "minimum movement" discipline is to gypsy jazz, if at all?

Adrian

rottjung

i Find that it is something that adapt itself while practice. if you trained your muscle memory first at a slow paste and then start to speed up the lick you almost get minimum movement by itself after certain point of speed...

jimvence

adrian wrote:

I just came across the following YouTube video, which is an exercise for "minimum movement" in the fretting hand. The guy makes a point of criticizing playing technique in which the fretting fingers fly far away from the fingerboard between notes.

My question is -- how important/relevant do you think this "minimum movement" discipline is to gypsy jazz, if at all?

Adrian

My guess is that Django may have said "Great, if you have four working fingers!"

That aside, I would say that the minimum motion is antithetical to the way most of the
accomplished GJ players seem to play. It seems limiting in the GJ context.

For example, most GJ arpeggio exercises discuss three octave arpeggios, or shifting your fingers in chromatic runs. Personally, the area I need more practice with is the opposite, in which I
am comfortable in playing with position shifts (especially when not looking at the guitar).

Jazzaferri

The idea behind minimal movement is that it obviously takes more time for a finger to cover 2 inches than a half and inch. The concept is dealing with vertical height off strings not moving hand up and down the neck and does not apply to some specialized techniques such as hammer ons. At high speed the less the vertical movement the fewer timing problems to overcome.

If you can it's a worthwhile thing to practice and if one is a beginner or intermediate player well worth the effort to catch early,


Playing at a comfortable speed work focus on the fingers being just a tiny bit off the strings. Light pressure .....only what's needed .......and minimal movement with relaxed fingers.

jimvence

OK, even after seeing the video, I didn't get that the reference amount of movement in
pressing down on strings -- I obviously was thinking it referred to up/down neck movement.

It seems like there is a different in impact on this technique on an electric with presumably lower
action, vs, a Gypsy Jazz acoustic. in which you are already battling with the increase in pressure
to push on the strings.

Elliot

There is also a difference due to fret height from electrics. I've found it useful to learn to use that thing they do when you have 4 notes on a string and the index finger slides into position for the next note at the next fret whichever direction. It not really that hard to make the 2 notes sound separately with these guitars, talk about saving vertical movement time. It also can help if you happen to have a pink winky, I mean a weak pinky... :P

Michael Bauer

Could there be some confusion about the definition of "minimal movement"? I think the idea has to do with minimal finger movement to play the note you want to play on the fret/string you want to play it. I don't think horizontal movement is breaking this rule. Just because I CAN play a note without shifting position doesn't mean I should want to. Classical guitarists (and players of vintage electrics) frequently choose a place to play a note based on the tonal (not pitch) differences between one string versus another, trying to keep the melody on one string, for example. To me, the J'Attendrai video shows Django moved his fingers the bare minimum to get the notes he wanted where he wanted them. He's not exactly flopping around out there. Almost no one playing at the pace that gypsy jazz players do has anything less than minimum movement, and it's beautiful to watch, especially during the horizontal runs.

I didn't get the impression that the video was suggesting that a player stay in one position as much as possible, but rather that a players fingers be trained to move as little as possible up and down to fret a note. That's good advice and anyone in gypsy jazz would benefit from it, but it is not related to vertical vs. horizontal playing. That's a stylistic choice, not a technical one.

Jazzaferri

Classic guitar string sounds vary so much between the wound ones and the flubby nylon G that lots of effort goes into keeping a solo line constant in tone.

Aranjuez used to make a wound G and Thomastik make classic strings that are all wound and steel classic that are all wound except for high E. those last two sets are the ones I use on my Dunn Nylojazzaferri (I know I know but thats what we called it) that Michael built for me several years ago.

The Thomastic's are the most even toned strings I have ever played.

Elliot

Jazzaferri wrote:

those last two sets are the ones I use on my Dunn Nylojazzaferri (I know I know but thats what we called it)

Perhaps also known as a "Maccalon"....but yeah, at speed it is almost unavoidable when you have arpeggios in the mix.

Pierrot

Minimum movment as taught to classical guitarists has nothing at all to do with
which finger goes on which fret. It's perfectly compatible with runs up and down the neck. It just means economy of movement.