Getting into gypsy jazz

[DMC]

I've started off learning the head and chords to Minor Swing cos it's such a great tune and I figure it's a good one to start with having only has 3 chords

Anyway I was just wondering if anyone has any advice on improvising over the changes. So far I've been simply playing arpeggios and connecting them up using the 'guides and gravity' principles as taught by Ted on Jazzmando.com
Letting my ear guide me I've stumbled upon some nice phrases and ideas but I want to go on beyond using ONLY the chord tones. #I did download John Mc Gann's lessons and they are great. I've studied the scales and his solo. However I find that when I think in terms of scales my playing no longer sounds anything like the gypsy style. I figured I should gradully introduce the notes from the scales sugested by John. But I guess my question is which notes are considered the most important? In what order should I incorporate them into my practise? I've tried incorporating the 6th note over the Am and Dm but it never sound right... #

BTW I realise the ultimate aim is to simply play what you hear in your head but I'm not at that stage yet. (I am working on it through Matt Glaser's Ear Training method. It's superb IMO)

Thanks,
Daniel

[250sc]

http://www.djangobooks.com/archives/2004/12/25/gypsy_jazz_mandolin_lessons_by_john_mcgann.html#00 0224

[DMC]

Thanks but as I said I already got them! My question is about how to use the scales John teaches. After the chord tones I wondering what notes from those scales are the most commonly used ones? I know I could learn this by studying lots of solos from records but my ear is nowhere near that good at this time.

[Perry]

Don't know if this will produce "gypsy" flavor but I have found the following very helpful:

Practice your scales (in your case the ones that John McGann taught you via his online lesson) in intervals specifically 3rds and 4ths.

So a C major scale in thirds:
C E D F E G F A G B A C then back down

Try the scale(s) in 4ths too. This is all pretty obvious stuff but what is nice about it is:

1) you don't need a book or sheet music to practice

2) it's challenging to play these up to speed...to a metronome of course

3) you will inject fresh phrases into your improvisations immediately

4) playing scales this way is so much more musical then running them up and down note by note which would be intervals of a 2nd

Maybe someone can enlighten us as to what intervals (if any)Gypsy players tend to emphasis?

[jmcgann]

Another really good answer to the question of how to use scale tones is to sit down and work out the lines Django and Stephane (and the great clarinet players etc.) played on the recordings- that's the living textbook to show you exactly what some of the possibilities are.

Another answer to "what are the good notes to use" is: what kind of melodies would you like to hear? Wanna play "like Django"? You will learn a ton by trying to figure out WHY those melodic lines sound so cool (i.e. think about the note function- "Gee, a G# on an A minor 6th- that's neat- what number of the scale/chord is it?) (Answer: natural 7). If you need to figure out what the notes of an Am6 are, then start there (hint: you can just play CF#AE or 5400 to hear the sonority, or one possible voicing...)

You say your ear isn't that good? Here's how to make it good: Get the Amazing Slow Downer (cheap and excellent software that allows you to slow down CDs or MP3's without changing pitch). Play the 1st note on the recording. Stop the machine. Listen to it again. repeat. Now, hunt and peck until you find the note that matches the recording. Repeat one note after another.

That's how I learned to do it- except there were no computers or slowdowners back in the day (you whippersnappers!). YES it takes a lot of patience YES it's a lot of effort YES it is absolutely invaluable to develop your ear if you want to be a good player...

In the comfort of your own practice room, at a slow pace, you can play the chord, and just sing something( maybe your own, maybe a snippet of the master's solos). Repeat what you just sung. If you like it, sing it some more. Then find the notes on your horn. Maybe you can write the line down, or record it, so you can refer to it later in case you forget it. Compose a line for measure. try to tell a story- have the 2nd line relate to the 1st somehow
(improvisation is composition in real time)


If you can sing it, you can play it. If you can play it and you can't sing it, you might be letting your fingers do the walking (rather than your heart doing the steering) # #

[DMC]

Thanks guys. I've been learning to sing back simple phrases from the major scales with Matt Glaser's method. Man, was I bad at that at first....but I'm getting better and starting to hear the music on a different 'level' now. I will definitely get the Amazing Slow Downer in time. I'm still only able to actually sing very simple phrases properly (!) but I'm getting better all the time. Weird thing is before I started I thought I could sing back pretty much any phrase I heard
Walk before you run eh?

[Chadmills]

Recent versions of Windows Media Player have slow down facilities.
Tom

[glauber]

Another good one is Transcribe. There's been plenty of discussions about which is best... mostly personal opinion. Amazing Slowdowner, easier to use, Transcriber has interesting extra features. Both have free 30-day trials available.

I'm reminded of what Jethro Burns said: "so this kid came to me and said he wanted to play like Django... so I broke two of his fingers!"

[Jean-Pierre WOOS]

DMC says: " my playing no longer sounds anything like the gypsy style ".

The start point for an improvistion sounding like gypsy style is the X7dim chord !
Al gypsy chords are "near" a X7dim chord:
Am6 = C7dim (= F#7dim = Adim7) but E flat
Dm6 = B7dim (=Fdim7 = Ddim7) but A flat
E7 = E7b9 = B7dim (=Fdim7 = Ddim7 = Adim7).

A second rule: gypsies don't like major modes. They are playing minor on major chords.
Ex: on E7, they use frequently Amin melodic scale starting on E.
They never use chord Xmaj7, but X6 chords (C6 sounds like Am7)...

Search in that direction and enjoy...

after years of listening to django, i have come up with a theory.
django used many melodic "devices" #and plugged them in where they work.
learing riffs will get you sounding authentic much faster than overdosing on theory.
learn something cool sounding, then learn why and how it works.
i think django's music was more about the sound than the math,
in otherwords i think he played more by the ear than the brain.
gypsy's are slick.
he had a bunch of slick runs, many many.
also going along with the rest of this, what jeepee just said, that is a breakdown of the "sound"
using those minor sounds, dim and half dim chords and scales.
i dont think he thought it out like that, i think that is just what happened.
the rest is us interpreting and analyzing.
trying to get the theory to work before you can make good sound will break your will, learning the licks and tricks will make you slick.
making music is more important.
then go back and do the theory.
when you can make the sound first then you can disect it, it is much easier to learn and use properly.
my 2 cents.


lotso good advice in this thread.
im gonna use it too

[Peter Hackman]

Perhaps it's cheating but there are transcriptions of several Django solos
on the internet (in standard mostly). Google Alex Roginski. Perhaps
one ore two printed solos could give some hints about his
devices, making it easier to decipher further solos. Also, it might be
nice to compare the approaches of different players of different eras,
e.g., pure ninth versus flatted ninth over the dominant.

And there are, of course, books.

My own model is Charlie Christian, many solos of whom I transcribed
more than 30 years ago. I've come to appreciate Django only in the last
few years. His stuff is more difficult, and although Christian
swung ferociously the rhythmic feel of Django seems much harder to
capture.

[jmcgann]

Just be sure to use your ears to make corrections on internet (as well as published-in-books) transcriptions. It's amazing how much inaccurate stuff is floating around out there.

I agree that theory before practice can be bad for one's ego. It's a great thing to have some vocabulary under your fingers and then (later) worry about what it is that you are playing. That step of knowing what it is will help you make those ideas work for you in other situations. There are a few "stock ideas" that Django revisits a lot from solo to solo- but I wouldn't call them 'licks', because he uses them brilliantly over varied chords, messes with the rhythm, plays a variety of other ideas to extend the original idea, etc...and THAT is "composing on the fly" versus "lick spewage".

[rjs]

I have been using John Jorgensen's "Introduction to Gypsy Jazz Guitar" as a framework for learning the style on the mandolin. You need to be comfortable with translating concepts
from guitar to mando ( figuring out your own chord voicings and fingering patterns) but the DVDs are excellent. He starts from improvisation using only chord tones and adds layers of
"color" on to that foundation. He does cover the concepts that JeePee mentioned above (using diminished runs over minor chords and minor runs over dom7 chords etc.)

--bob

[Ted Eschliman]

And for gosh sake, no vanilla pentatonic runs in this music; there's nothing that sounds more inappropriately "Gadjo." I was listening to my recent acquisition of "Gypsy Rumble," the endless pentatonic meandering in the mandolin solos set my teeth on edge. I can only imagine what this vocabulary must do to the harmonically sophisticated Manouche ear.

the bluegrass kinda band i pick with, i forced them to learn "aniversary song" i would suggest working on that song its not to hard to grasp and the chords are easy to figure out etc. and the melody is cool. you can also use that melodic minor thingy previously discussed over the first E7 chord. django's solo starts on the B part wich is a very cool place to start.
jmcgann i should have used a different word than "lick" it is not quite appropriate, but it was in the direction of.......
something i learned is to listen to the parts that a musican is not playing on.. that really helps get with the rythm and phrases/phrasing a particular musician might use.
i once sat down and learned much of "the crave" by jelly roll morton, of course it was mandoized, however jelly roll is the king of space and time!
its a hard habit to break, playing EVERY NOTE! some mandolin players keep picking during those parts.. i have heard grisman do it... sounds funny.

have any of you seen the crazy video of the little gypsy kids completly shredding jazz on guitars? its obscenly rediculous... its somewhere on youtube. ill try and find it again. might make you cry and not want to look at an insturment for a little bit.

[Jean-Pierre WOOS]

And for gosh sake, no vanilla pentatonic runs in this music; there's nothing that sounds more inappropriately "Gadjo." .../...
I can only imagine what this vocabulary must do to the harmonically sophisticated Manouche ear.

Yes, Ted, you are right... but...
Listen to Django's tune "Stompin' at Decca": it's builded on a G pentatonic scale (G-A-B-D-E)...
Of course, if you plays a G6.9 chord it's the same notes (G-B-D-E-A)...

X6.9 chords are frequently played by Gypsies... but, why pentatonic scale sounds bad on it...
That's a great question for me...

[Peter Hackman]

Just be sure to use your ears to make corrections on internet (as well as published-in-books) transcriptions. It's amazing how much inaccurate stuff is floating around out there.

The name was Rogowski, not Roginski.

http://homepage.mac.com/alex_rogowski/iblog/

I don't have that solo (After You've Gone) on CD
so I can't confirm its accuracy, but I believe it's easy to check

[Peter Hackman]

And for gosh sake, no vanilla pentatonic runs in this music; there's nothing that sounds more inappropriately "Gadjo." I was listening to my recent acquisition of "Gypsy Rumble," the endless pentatonic meandering in the mandolin solos set my teeth on edge. I can only imagine what this vocabulary must do to the harmonically sophisticated Manouche ear.

Who?

[DMC]

Thanks for all the advice. I actually found some Django and Stephane solos transcribed for the mandolin in a mandozine '.tef' file. Along with John's sample solo they should keep me busy for a while. I'm gonna take the phrases and ideas that I like and see how the notes relate to the chords.

rjs,
the John Jorgensen method sounds like what I'm after. As I said I'm comfortable playing over the changes using the basic chord tones but I want to gradually introduce more 'sounds' in terms of notes.

Ted,
I'll be sure not to use any pentatonic scales! As I said when I think in terms of 'scales' I cannot seem to play 'musically'. I know part of the problem is that I feel I have too many notes to work with and I tend to fall into the trap of playing boring scalar runs. When I use only the chord tones and vary the rhythm, use some space and connect them up using the 'gravity' notes I get something resembling music! However I'd now like to add maybe one extra note in. Over the root chord - Am6 - up to now I've only been using A C and E. What note from the melodic minor would you tend you use the most after those basic chord tones?

Peter,
I've never listened to Charlie Christian much. I will do. Would you recommend studying some of his solos and ideas before delving into Django? For my first foray into jazz on the mandolin perhaps the Gypsy style is a bit too advanced.... I know I learned a lot of simple fiddle tunes before I attempted my first bluegrass solo and I learned some Bill Monroe breaks before attempting any of Grisman's so there was this progression in terms of 'complexity' that helped me get along. Maybe I should approach jazz in the same way.

[Peter Hackman]

Peter,
I've never listened to Charlie Christian much. I will do. Would you recommend studying some of his solos and ideas before delving into Django? For my first foray into jazz on the mandolin perhaps the Gypsy style is a bit too advanced.... I know I learned a lot of simple fiddle tunes before I attempted my first bluegrass solo and I learned some Bill Monroe breaks before attempting any of Grisman's so there was this progression in terms of 'complexity' that helped me get along. Maybe I should approach jazz in the same way.

That would of course depend on your taste and your goals. I transcribed
Christian solos more that 30 years ago, to sort of build up a core
vocabulary, but not striving towards any particular groove.
To my ears the two guitarists swing very differently.

Although Christian is often seen as precursor of bop, I think of
him as a swing player, a guitaristic extension of Lester Young.
There's a lot of blues in his playing, rhythmic riffs but also
arpeggiated phrases utilitizing the upper intervals. But he really has none
of the chromaticism of the boppers.

And compared with Django there aren't that many standards.

Now there are two excellent sites where you can judge for yourself,
especially if you read fluently in the key of D flat (I don't- to me it's C#,
shifting my C figures). One has some of his really long solos,
an excellent lesson in wrapping things up.

http://home.elp.rr.com/valdes/index.html

http://www3.nbnet.nb.ca/hansen/Charlie/

The second site seems to be closed at intervals. It has a short tutorial
on Christian's style, working out of chord forms, which partially
translates to the mando - it has led me to reexamining my fingering
and positions. I believe it also has sound clips.

[jmcgann]

I don't have that solo (After You've Gone) on CD
so I can't confirm its accuracy, but I believe it's easy to check

That's one of my favorite Django solos, and the transcription is pretty close...This will sound offensive to some, but it's the TAB transcriptions I've seen that tend to be more inaccurate than the standard notation transcriptions- and this may well be that people who bother to learn to deal with notation may also be developing their ears in conjunction with the logic that the understanding of the harmonic language brings to the table...in other words, tab doesn't require any special skills to write (most tab is written without rhythmic notation), which may or may not have any bearing on the likelihood of accuracy...

PS: Pentatonic scales are used like crazy in Gypsy Jazz- just not your average blues box pentatonic. Try this one for your minor 6th chords:

Am6= A B C E F# (1 2 b3 5 6). Django uses it a lot!

[Ted Eschliman]

Jee Pee, I think we're on the same page. Pentatonic scales can be compared to croissants. If I go into a French bakery, I would love to get one slightly doughy, crisp on the outside, fresh out of the oven. However, I don't want one plain; I also like to give it some flavor, enough butter to make my physician double my Crestor (true story), maybe a little orange marmalade, maybe to soak up a sip of cappuccino. Yes the Pentatonic scale is used, but I perceive two considerations in improvisation:

Harmonic. There's a much more sophisticated underlying harmonic structure to be communicated, with diminished and half-diminished chords, undulating key centers, a sense of harmonic direction. Pentatonic vocabulary alone will not give you this. You get one static chord with these five notes. No matter how many notes, how many octaves, what kind of speed, you just sit there, no chordal movement implied. Gypsy jazz in general is anything but harmonically static.

Melodic Ornamentation. Listen to the first notes of the melody of Swing 39. Pentatonic? Mainly, but there's a lovely raised 4th there. That caractéristique ornementale is rampant in Gypsy music; add it to the pentatonic and you have a start. I already mentioned the diminished runs, but the blue notes of the lowered 3rd and 7th are another flavor to sprinkle on discriminately. However, these notes are used as chromatic accidentals (or better, "incidentals"), not so much to imply a vertical structure.

The major 7th is treated in a different way. The Gadjo uses it as part of the Maj7 chord (think the introduction to Chicago's "Colour My World,") but the Gypsy uses it more often as a melodic ornamentation to the tonic, living more commonly (vertically) with a Maj6 chord in its stead.

John, I'm a new man with my recent introduction to Bruce Saunders' "Jazz Pentatonics," but that's a whole other story. Correct me if I'm wrong, but Bruce's use of Pentatonics to outline extended chord members is intriguing, but a different subject than the context of "traditional" Gypsy Jazz vocabulary.

what is really amazing is how this music is so very much like traditional middle eastern music, but with different rythms. gypsys were all over europe and into the middle east, i guess that is how the music is so diverse. i do stuff like what has been discussed in this thread all the time on the oud. however the chord progressions never have an extension beyond a dominant 7. the way alot of these things happen in middle eastern music is by way of the scale. many scales have ascending and decending patterns wich differ from one another, and passing tones wich are either included or omited depending on the context. by no means a carbon copy, just something ive noticed that has great similarity. its hard to get beyond the timing thing, but the notes are there.

[DMC]

lemonhilljohn,

funnny you mention the oud. I've been listening to Anouar Brahem's Astrakan Cafe recently. He is an astounding player IMO. His playing is so tasteful - the melodic phrasing, the space, dynamics. A great improviser to my ears. His music sounds like a blend of Western, Arabic and Gypsy. The Mediterranean must have been one big musical melting pot.

John,
thanks. I'll try adding the 2nd and 6th notes to my practise over the Am6. Am I right in saying that although that IS a pentatonic scale (i.e. a five note scale) to most musicians most of the time the label 'pentatonic' refers to the basic major (1 2 3 5 6) or minor (1 b3 4 5 b7) pentatonics? I only ask because sometimes when I read the different views on here over the use of pentatonics it seems that people are not always talking about the same thing.

Peter,
thanks. On the second site it actually reads about adding the 6th, 9th and b7th notes to the chord tones to get a 'jazz sound'. That pretty much answers my original question.

I think I'll start with adding the 6th and 9th notes. Am I right in saying this is what John suggested above? Adding the B and Fsharp over the Am6? So over the Dm6 the 6th and 9th notes would be E and B? But over the E7 I would want to add the 6th and a b9th - a C and an F? Is this right or I'm I going insane?

[jmcgann]

Am I right in saying that although that IS a pentatonic scale (i.e. a five note scale) to most musicians most of the time the label 'pentatonic' refers to the basic major (1 2 3 5 6) or minor (1 b3 4 5 b7) pentatonics?

"Most musicians" only scratch the surface of what's available via pentatonics, i.e. the one you mentioned (they are they scale scale- over a C chord C D E G A and over an Am A C D E G. Same notes!)

Jerry Bergonzis' Inside Improvisation Vol 2. "Pentatonics" is a good place to check out ways of using much more sophisticated pentatonic concepts ("sophisticated" in that they are applied over more 'modern' chord symbols, i.e. C minor with the C changed to B becomes B Eb(D#) F G Bb(A#) which he applies over Abmmaj7, G7alt, Db7#11, Fm7b5(9) and Bmajor7#5- not your basic Gypsy Jazz chords, but delicious sounds used by 'modern' i.e. post 1960 jazz musicians). That'll keep you off the streets awhile.

adding the B and Fsharp over the Am6? So over the Dm6 the 6th and 9th notes would be E and B? But over the E7 I would want to add the 6th and a b9th - a C and an F? Is this right or I'm I going insane?

No problem. Over the E7 (which likes b9 and b13 resolving to a minor I chord: 1 b9 3 4 5 b6 b7) think the harmonic minor scale of the I chord: A B C D E F G#. Just avoid the A as a pitch center (in other words, don't sit on it!)- So (scalewise, just to fill in the pentatonic skeleton) you are possibly toggling between A melodic minor (ABCDEF#G#) for Am6, Dmel for Dm6 ( DEFGABC#) and A harm for E7 (EFG#ABCD). Study what notes change and what notes stay the same between chord changes.

A possible pentatonic solution for E7 b9b13: Fm6 pentatonic= F G Ab(G#) C D (b9 #9 3 b13 b7). It adds a #9 which is always compatible with a b9 anyway...