Can anybody give give some insight to the gypsy slide technique?

[SammieWammie]

I don't know what the mane for this technique is but I call it the gypsy slide, seeing as it's used in gypsy jazz and it's a slide. Or as a violinist described it a glissando on guitar. You know where you do a slide on a string but pick every note in time. At 2:52 in this video is what I mean:

Django Reinhardt J'attendrai Swing - YouTube

How do you do this? How can you achieve that accuracy? That's a miscellaneous guitar technique I've wanted to learn for a while.

Also on a related note how would you play hornlike downwards glissandos, like I've heard Bird do, on a guitar. Like at 1:16 in this video

78rpm pressing: Billie's Bounce - Charley Parker's Ree Boppers, 1945 - Savoy 573 - YouTube

Thanks

[SammieWammie]

My bad, he does it on Billie's Bounce near the start of his solo but I meant 1:16 of this video:

Charlie Parker - "Confirmation" - YouTube

[darionapoli74]

Well, for the first one my suggestion is to let a loose wrist do the job. If you've played jazz or electric, the tendency is to involve the forearm a lot which can give the impression of picking faster but it's very tiring and it's harder to get the "staccato" sound that Django and other gypsies get. Really let the wrist loose and make sure you keep it loose until you arrive at your target note.
Don't worry so much about hitting all the notes necessarily correctly, focus instead on being accurate on when and how you hit that last resolutive note. Start slow with a metronome and make sure you STAY at a slow tempo for a while, only when you're really comfortable at that speed, move up in speed as you maintain control.

I've found the best way to create Parker's feel on his runs is to not pick on those passages but simply pull off or hammer on, just use the legato techniques and you'll get that feel better. Hope this helps, if not I'm happy to try to answer or show differently, cheers!
Dario
Dario Napoli: Professional Guitarist

[JakeAcci]

Hey Dario thanks for putting that link in there, I went to your site your playing sounds awesome!

[SammieWammie]

Thanks Dario, I still have a couple questions though. All my picking motion comes from rotating my wrist, not the gypsy rest stroke technique but I'll be learning that soon, my teacher happens to be an expert at that and I'll be getting some gypsy jazz lessons soon. But the glissando gypsy slide, it would be possible to do with any picking technique so long as you get it coordinated, so coordination was my main question about it. I can do something vaguely resembling the gypsy slide (is that what it's called?) by simply picking triplets (or semiquavers) while sliding up the neck, aiming for the last note (which I can do fine), yet the whole magic of the line comes from having it coordinated. Especially coordinated at speed.

And as for Bird's little downward glissando I was talking about, any chance you could show or explain how you achieve this in a little more depth? I'm very interested.

By the way I've been listening to your stuff on your site as I'm writing this. Sounds great , love how you did Parker gypsy style, and nice blues touch at the end of Moose. Might just buy it

[mr. beaumont]

I target several notes on the way up...I think of hitting those touchstones as quarter notes in a full bar (or more) upward glissando.

Practice very slowly and precisely.

Gypsy jazz is full of these fun licks and tricks....

[darionapoli74]

Thank you very much Sammie and Jake, I really appreciate that you like my album!
I will create a couple videos in the next few day about these two topics and post them to my youtube channel, so hopefully that helps, a bientot!

[darionapoli74]

Play like Parker on guitar, Dario Napoli - YouTube

Play like Django, chromatic glissato, Dario Napoli - YouTube

Here are the vids Sammy, hope they help, If they do, feel free to share around

[cosmic gumbo]

This was also one of Les Paul's signature moves, his playing is full of glisses, up, down, long, short. He was America's Django....

[SammieWammie]

Yes! Thank you Dario! Great!

[digger]

Is the European site going to get the face lift, too? Also, about thee times over a period of twelve months or so I've requested a catalogue from the European site and have never received one - are they still produced?

Many thanks,
Derek

[Eunice824]

My bad, he does it on Billie's Bounce near the start of his solo but I meant 1:16 of this video:

[SammieWammie]

The last two answers: ???