Gypsy Jazz - Django Reinhardt

[Robert****]

Anyone digging Django Reinhardt?

Here is my fellow Swede Andreas Oberg live in Portland. He is one amazing dude at this style. :


One of our members sent me some suggestions for getting into this style of playing. He said:

If you want to start, I suggest you to go check some forums like www.djangobooks.com and www.manoucheries.com. Manoucheries is a french forum though.

Also, start to listen to that music, look for players like Andreas Oberg, Stochelo Rosenberg, Jimmy Rosenberg, Bireli Lagrene, Angelo Debarre and of course, the master Django Reinhardt. There are a lot more but these are some of my favorites.

Learning the solos Django did is a good start but also learning arpeggios because the improvisation in that style is based on arpeggios (diminished, 7th, 6th, 9th, minor etc.)

There are some good books like Gypsy Picking, Gypsy Fire (written by Andreas), Gypsy Rythm. Also, there is a good video from my teacher Denis Chang (www.fleche-dor.com).

You can find backtracking on Stephane Wrembel site he calls it Play Alongs.

[R_of_G]

You knew I'd be replying to this one didn't you Robert? As I believe I have said before, Django is my favorite guitar player of all time [living or dead]. Oberg does a great job of playing in that style. One thing I "learned" from Django is the power of a single string. Because of his physical limitations [two of the fingers on his fretting hand were fused together in a fire and almost unusable] Django's phrasing employs a lot of lines which are played on one or two strings. There are a lot of times when I will intentionally play leads on only one or two strings to develop Django-like phrasing. Allman Bros. fans probably know that Dickie Betts wrote "Jessica" to be played on one or two strings as a tribute to Django's phrasing style.

[Robert****]

Hey, that's a good name for a band - "Single String Power"!

So true, playing on one string can take you far. Not many people do that these days.

[Radioboy950]

Robert,

There's a fantastic local group here in the "D" that does a wonderful job with the gypsy jazz stuff. Check it out when you get a chance. They've got a couple CDs too.

http://hotclubofdetroit.com/about.asp

[Algonquin]

Cool. The Theme song from Monk, 'It's a Jungle out there' by Randy Newman reminds me of this. This one is a bit snappier though.

Good Stuff!

[Tone2TheBone]

You knew I'd be replying to this one didn't you Robert? As I believe I have said before, Django is my favorite guitar player of all time [living or dead]. Oberg does a great job of playing in that style. One thing I "learned" from Django is the power of a single string. Because of his physical limitations [two of the fingers on his fretting hand were fused together in a fire and almost unusable] Django's phrasing employs a lot of lines which are played on one or two strings. There are a lot of times when I will intentionally play leads on only one or two strings to develop Django-like phrasing. Allman Bros. fans probably know that Dickie Betts wrote "Jessica" to be played on one or two strings as a tribute to Django's phrasing style.

I never knew that he only used 2 fingers to fret that's amazing. I love Dhango and Gypsy Jazz. They're having a festival this coming October in town so that should be very cool.

[jpfeifer]

I love Django's style. I wish I had more hours in a day to spend some time to learn some of this stuf. Here's a link to another guy that does this style extremely well. He's a young guy from Germany. Amazing right hand ...

http://youtube.com/watch?v=J_pfmrj0rxc

[aeolian]

Accept no substitute! Just kidding.

See actual performances by Django here:
Click on the link J'attendrai under his picture and see his magic playing with 2 fingers on his fretting hand.

http://www.about-django.com/news/videos/videos.php

[Ro3b]

If you want to start, I suggest you to go check some forums like www.djangobooks.com and www.manoucheries.com. Manoucheries is a french forum though.

One of the authors at Djangobooks is an old friend of mine, Michael Horowitz. He's a tremendous musician (he plays Irish music too!), and his books about Django's technique are pretty much required reading for learning this style.

[SuperSwede]

Excellent, just excellent! I love this stuff

[Jimi75]

I remember my grandma's brother in Sicily playing on an acoustic guitar mixing gypsy swing with Sicilian folk, which is pretty close. I loved to listen to him playing when I was a little kid.

My grandma's grandparents were french gypsy who settled down in Sicily, because they aquired a huge piece of land there. I am still on plan to check the city archives with my brother (next time we visit the family), because we want to find out more about them. Obviously, they were musicians, too. I might have a very old picture of them at home and maybe I scan it one or the other day.

Reinhardt was a great player but also the next generation does a great job keeping his music alive!

Talking about the arpeggios, I found a beautiful three piece lesson of Romane, who also played with Schnuckenack Reinhardt (what a name, he?!). He explains some chords and interchanges and then demonstrates some nice arps. Somehow it sounds very soulful when these guys play these arps - just very very melodical. If you like the first part you will dig the second and third part, too!