The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
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  1. #1

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    Maybe you're interested .This could be fun. Finding out about Oscar Moore, Eddie Lang
    to name a few. I'm sure you all know interesting details about those great players and I
    am very nosy

    For the kick off here a few seconds with the maestro
    himself:


  2.  

    The Jazz Guitar Chord Dictionary
     
  3. #2

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    Simply magical.

  4. #3

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    Here's quite a gem from 1928: Eddie Lang's backing up Gladys Bentley



  5. #4

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    Al Casey, born 1915. He was swinging in and before Django' time.
    He played for ages in Fats Waller's Band.


  6. #5

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    Al Casey is criminally underrated

  7. #6

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    Btw this vid I did recently seems relevant:



    sorry about the distortion. Those guitars are loud.

    theres some good suggestions of players in the comments too

  8. #7

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77

    theres some good suggestions of players in the comments too
    Thanks for that great video. After an odyssee through a sea of different guitars I finally fell in love
    with a "Roundback Nylon".
    I love that sound and going to stick with it.


  9. #8

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  10. #9

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    1922...

    Dominic Nicholas Anthony Lucinese, known professionally as Nick Lucas, was an American jazz guitarist and singer. He was the first jazz guitarist to record as a soloist. His popularity during his lifetime came from his reputation as a singer. His signature song was "Tiptoe Through the Tulips".
    source: wikipedia


  11. #10

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    Andreas Oberg
    A lifelong guitar player, Andreas is known for his incredibly fast playing, innovative use of altered scales and harmony, “hot club gypsy style swing,” and deep knowledge of the fretboard. Benedetto Guitars


    Frank Vignola
    (born December 30, 1965) is an American jazz guitarist. He has played in the genres of swing, fusion, gypsy jazz, classical, and pop. Career. Vignola grew up on Long Island, New York. His father played accordion and banjo and his brother plays trumpet. When he was five, he picked up the guitar, learning from his father and from records. Wikipedia



  12. #11

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    Jimmy Rosenberg.

    Quote from Django Books.com:
    Guitar virtuoso Jimmy Rosenberg (Asten, 1980) was a world star but became addicted and entangled in his own life. He has hardly been seen in public in the last ten years. Soon he will be a grandfather for the second time. Because he can only see his grandchildren when he is clean, he retreats to a closed clinic. But he also wants to shine on the guitar one more time. "Why do they only care about you when you're famous?"

    If you do not know Jimmy Rosenberg's story yet, you should check out the famous documentary 'The father, the son & the talent' from Eindhoven-based Jeroen Berkvens from 2006: a gypsy jazz guitarist from De Peel (area in the Netherlands where Jimmy is from) causes furor from a young age. The world's best jazz guitarist gets an American contract and plays on the highest world stage. But 'the new Django Reinhardt' quickly gets into trouble. /Quote



  13. #12

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    Maybe somebody gets inspired...


  14. #13

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    Gypsy Swing Guitar with Joscho Stephan

    here a few words from his web-site:

    His roots lie in Gipsy Swing music, the style pioneered in the 1930s by the legendary jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt. Joscho Stephan has not merely absorbed this music, but also interprets it on the highest level and is actively engaged in extending its boundaries. Despite his youth, after four highly acclaimed CDs and a DVD he has played his way into the illustrous circle of the finest Gipsy Swing musicians in the world.


  15. #14

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    Yeah I kind of feel Gypsy jazz is its own thing. Always tends to skew things towards single note virtuosity. While there was a Parisian school of jazz guitar in the 1930s it wasn’t the prevailing style.

    Joscho Stephan is a more traditional style GJ player but note that even he sounds much less ‘Django-y’ than Dunaevsky. the style evolved...

  16. #15

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    Yeah I kind of feel Gypsy jazz is its own thing. Always tends to skew things towards single note virtuosity. While there was a Parisian school of jazz guitar in the 1930s it wasn’t the prevailing style.

    Joscho Stephan is a more traditional style GJ player but note that even he sounds much less ‘Django-y’ than Dunaevsky. the style evolved...
    Many of the younger players are in for speed. Sometimes the melody is drowned in lightning fast arpeggios.

  17. #16

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    For instance





    how much this style existed before Django I couldn’t say. I would say it didn’t. Django brought specific elements together - classical banjo pick technique (in which he had been formally schooled iirc), gypsy music, bal musette and chanson, and the improvisation and swing style of Louis Armstrong to make his guitar style that I think it spawned imitators, or at least players who were influenced by Django’s approach even if they were contemporaries.

    That said, Paris was a real melting pot and this type of French/Manouche string band swing would have been a thing anyway. Eddie Lang and Joe Venuti are an important forerunner, for instance.

  18. #17

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    Quote Originally Posted by crusoe
    Many of the younger players are in for speed. Sometimes the melody is drowned in lightning fast arpeggios.
    they just don’t improvise melodies like Django did... they sound more harmonically tame as well. Just locked into the chord tones.

  19. #18

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    Robin Nolan, Amsterdam


  20. #19

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    they just don’t improvise melodies like Django did... they sound more harmonically tame as well. Just locked into the chord tones.
    Really? You know a lot more about it than me but I think Antoine Boyer and Sebastian Giniaux among others are about as harmonically inventive and tasty as you can be within the limits of the style. Personally I like their music far more than the last generation of guys, Stochelo etc. Great as they are.

    If anyone hasn't heard Sebastian live at the Quecumbar I highly recommend checking out that recording.
    There's just 4 tracks of him on this album but they are all stunning.

    Clair de lune - Live, a song by Sebastien Giniaux, Ducato Piotrowski, Pete Kubryk-Townsend on Spotify

  21. #20

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    I'm a fan of Stephane Wrembel...

  22. #21

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    Quote Originally Posted by sully75
    Really? You know a lot more about it than me but I think Antoine Boyer and Sebastian Giniaux among others are about as harmonically inventive and tasty as you can be within the limits of the style. Personally I like their music far more than the last generation of guys, Stochelo etc. Great as they are.

    If anyone hasn't heard Sebastian live at the Quecumbar I highly recommend checking out that recording.
    There's just 4 tracks of him on this album but they are all stunning.

    Clair de lune - Live, a song by Sebastien Giniaux, Ducato Piotrowski, Pete Kubryk-Townsend on Spotify
    I’m more interested in prewar jazz guitar. I know this might seem like an odd thing to say but I don’t really follow GJ that much, so apols for the generalisation. Never been to Samois for instance.

    I find the ethos of the scene with specific reference to the guitar quite alien to my musical values but I’ve managed to end up working with some great players from it so I don’t think I’ve missed out too much. People generally seem to like the way I play that music even though I would say I lack some of the core skills you’d expect a straight up GJ player to have. (My rhythm style isn’t really la pompe for instance and my gypsy Bossa is pretty bad. )

    Btw I fell into doing this stuff from playing swing dance gigs with a band leader who wanted an acoustic rhythm guitar sound, which is actually quite a different thing. Most GJ bands play way too fast to play for dancers.

    I then transcribed a load of Django because he was the main guy I knew from that era and I needed to learn rest stroke picking because I needed to cut through on acoustic. So I ended up playing the basics of the style. (Later I discovered the US players of that era.)

    I am aware of Giniaux, but I haven’t listened that much to him. What I’ve heard I like. He did some stuff with Kora, right? I’ll give it a listen.

    I find gypsy jazz rhythm sections a bit relentless too a lot of the time which sort of puts me off the music after a while. Even Django. Thing is that’s what people like about it I think- it’s locked in.

    No disrespect to the people who do it well, it’s personal taste. I’ve ended up playing this type of music but I think I’ve always been keen to pull away from that format a bit, bass, two guitars, fiddle, everyone takes turns to shred. Sometimes the style can be a bit tyrannical too.

    (I love Hono Winterstein, plays any groove as well as a great drummer)
    Last edited by christianm77; 03-25-2020 at 07:43 AM.

  23. #22

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    oscar alemán on django-


    "I knew Django Reinhardt well. He used to say jazz was gipsy—we often argued over that. I agree with many Americans I met in France who said he played very well but with too many gipsy tricks. He had very good technique for both hands, or rather one hand and a pick, because he always played with a pick. Not me, I play with my fingers. There are things you can't do with a pick—you can't strike the treble with two fingers and play something else on the bass string. But I admired him and he was my friend. He was my greatest friend in France. We played together many times, just for ourselves. I used to go to his wagon, where he lived. I've slept and eaten there—and also played! He had three or four guitars. Django never asked anyone to go to his wagon, but he made an exception with me. I appreciated him, and I believe the feeling was mutual."




    harry volpe was another friend of django's...when django came stateside, volpe hooked up with him immediately...great player and teacher



    cheers

  24. #23

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    Quote Originally Posted by christianm77
    I’m more interested in prewar jazz guitar. I know this might seem like an odd thing to say but I don’t really follow GJ that much, so apols for the generalisation. Never been to Samois for instance.

    I find the ethos of the scene with specific reference to the guitar quite alien to my musical values but I’ve managed to end up working with some great players from it so I don’t think I’ve missed out too much. People generally seem to like the way I play that music even though I would say I lack some of the core skills you’d expect a straight up GJ player to have. (My rhythm style isn’t really la pompe for instance and my gypsy Bossa is pretty bad. )

    Btw I fell into doing this stuff from playing swing dance gigs with a band leader who wanted an acoustic rhythm guitar sound, which is actually quite a different thing. Most GJ bands play way too fast to play for dancers.

    I then transcribed a load of Django because he was the main guy I knew from that era and I needed to learn rest stroke picking because I needed to cut through on acoustic. So I ended up playing the basics of the style. (Later I discovered the US players of that era.)

    I am aware of Giniaux, but I haven’t listened that much to him. What I’ve heard I like. He did some stuff with Kora, right? I’ll give it a listen.

    I find gypsy jazz rhythm sections a bit relentless too a lot of the time which sort of puts me off the music after a while. Even Django. Thing is that’s what people like about it I think- it’s locked in.

    No disrespect to the people who do it well, it’s personal taste. I’ve ended up playing this type of music but I think I’ve always been keen to pull away from that format a bit, bass, two guitars, fiddle, everyone takes turns to shred. Sometimes the style can be a bit tyrannical too.

    (I love Hono Winterstein, plays any groove as well as a great drummer)
    Totally. Well, it's a free country. Admittedly, if there was not such a strong jam scene for Django stuff, I might not work so hard on it. But my personal philosophy is that unless you're a super genius, you should probably give playing the music that other people around you are playing. And the buy in for playing Django stuff is a lot smaller than for playing bepop.

    I've heard other people mention that about gypsy rhythm. That doesn't particularly bother me. Some of the actual gypsy stuff is a little "purple" for me (I have maybe the most limited synethesia for music). But I'm trying to get into it. It's sort of very pure music to me. Very educational and digs at a lot of fundamentals. Not snobby, other than that it's pretty snobby within its own boundaries.

    I just found this today which is pretty cool. I learned some things in the way he fingers it. Seems like every open string he can get he uses. Since he's Django's buddy I imagine there's some commonality:


    I spent two weeks in France recently, miracle I got out. I saw almost everyone I wanted to. Just amazing. Paris is (or was) just amazing. I left the day before the travel ban.

    I think he's really extraordinary, probably one of the greatest musicians I've ever heard.


    I think you'd dig Mathieu Chatelain's rhythm style. Yeah, it's basically like a musical drum. I asked my friend what his ideal GJ recording was and he said this:


    Also this:

  25. #24

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    My main objective with GJ is that I would just play what I play on a selmac. I’d like to bring more of the Peter Bernstein or Lage Lund type stuff into it. I already play a heap of bop.... just play that in the context.

    what comes out is irritatingly stylistic though haha. macaferris just want you to play that way lol. But it also gives you a lot of leeway to get away with stuff because the attack and tone are so Django-y.

    so if someone asks me if I play gypsy jazz, quite honestly I try not to (and fail.) hopefully that creates an interesting tension for the listener. My playing on GJ autopilot is pretty notey and typical.

    I didn’t like it when somebody said I sounded like a different guitarist on selmer than on electric. He meant it as a complement but I hated that idea.

    i like that Ferre thing Montaigne st Genevieve with the electric archtop. Actually sounds great on that instrument and I’ve not heard it played on one before. It’s tough to play archtop with a gypsy sound without having to really go into cliches to avoid sounding like a straightahead player. Even Birelli sounds like Benson (a bit.) Ferre just had the sound of course...

  26. #25

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    Anyway if anyone is interested here are three vids I did on pre war guitar styles: