Article Sphere Logo
 

Gypsy Jazz Guitar - A One-Man Genre

By Expert Author: Ricky Sharples | Article Abstract
Word Count: 518 words | Views: 374 view(s)
Gypsy jazz guitar is a genre based on the music of Django Reinhardt, a guitar player who overcame a severe disability to become a legend in jazz music. Most people have heard music by the Quintet du Hot Club de France or one of the gypsy jazz groups devoted to its style of music. Born in the 1930's this group with Stephane Grapelli on violin, Django Reinhardt, Joseph Reinhardt and Roger Chaput on guitars and Louis Vola on bass, pioneered the concept of lead and rhythm guitar.

The group played popular jazz tunes of the time with Django and Grapelli alternating on the lead with the two other guitars playing rhythm and Vola playing walking bass figures. A drummer was never in the mix. They also wrote their own tunes, many of which have themselves become standards. Some of the group's compositions include blue Drag, Minor Swing, Djangology, Django Rag, Django’s Blues, Django’s Tiger and Nuages.

The group's violinist, Stephane Grapelli continued making music until his death in 1997 but the figure that has proved to be the inspiration of many gypsy jazz groups, Django Reinhardt only lived to be forty-three years old. Gypsy jazz has been behind the popularity of the Maccaferri and Selmer style guitars. The guitar that Django Reinhardt made famous was made by the Selmer company in Paris based on a revolutionary guitar design by Mario Maccaferri, one of the first generation of classical guitar players. Surprisingly, Maccaferri was never familiar with Django Reinhardt's music.

As with all music associated with the tag "gypsy" the music is usually passed on directly from one musician to another. The Quintet Du Hot Club came out of an environment where playing music was simply a part of life. Each musician was both student and teacher. And there were not too many note readers among them. In fact Stephane Grapelli, a classically trained musician used breaks in the groups playing schedule to tutor Django in music. So every guitar player wanting to learn to play gypsy jazz is faced with learning the music of Django Reinhardt, as played by Django Reinhardt.

One element that made Django's music unique was the fact that, due to an injury in a fire, Django played the guitar using only the first and second fingers of his left hand. This limited the range of notes available to him as he worked his way up and down the fretboard was severely limited. As a result of his injury, barre chords are not found in gypsy jazz guitar music. A close look at Django's music will tell you he had little use for sevenths in his music.

If you want to listen to some contemporary gypsy jazz guitar, American groups devoted to the genre are Pearl Django and the John Jorgenson Quintet but Europe is still the place where there is most interest in this music, with groups like Hot Club of Hungary and Hot Club of France. If you want to learn to play gypsy jazz guitar, the ability to read tab would be a minimum requirement because there are many examples of Django's music available as guitar tab.
Ricky Sharples

About the Author/Author Bio

Do you want to learn to play the guitar? Learn How To Play A Guitar For Free is a constantly updated blog which contains all the resources you need for: learning to play solo guitar, how to learn guitar chords, how to learn to read and play easy acoustic guitar tabs, finding a free online guitar tuner, looking for free guitar lessons online, and how to learn guitar scales.

Article Source: http://www.articlesphere.com/Article/Gypsy-Jazz-Guitar---A-One-Man-Genre/162980

Article Submitted: 2008-09-06 | This Article has been viewed 374 times.

Rate Article

Related Videos

The Jazz Bebop Era
The Early years of Jazz
What is Cool Jazz
25 greatest Jazz soloists
History of Jazz
 

More "Music" Related Articles

 
 

Listed below are more articles related to the above article from the "Music" article category.

People interested in the above article "Gypsy Jazz Guitar - A One-Man Genre" are also interested in the related articles listed below:

 
Make Your Own Beats from home can be a lot easier than you think. If you know how to use your computer to check your e-mail account, you can make your own beats online.
When the interest of learning how to play acoustic guitar strikes you, you should go ahead and take whatever means needed in order to go through with getting yourself started. Knowing how to play acoustic guitar cannot only give you something to relax with but it is a skill that not a lot of people have. Therefore, you would have knowledge that not everyone has and this is something that is admirable.
In days where powerful production tools are at your fingertips with a few clicks of a mouse, and marketing yourself to millions of people worldwide is just as easy, its important to have a brief guide for beginners. Stepping you through the process from beginning to end and hopefully helping you jump over the hurdles a lot of us blundered through in the early days of computer music.
When you think of singing lessons what exactly comes into your mind? It is likely that you would say a singing lesson taking place at a school, home, or business. Those singing lessons are popular face-to-face singing lessons that are often given by a professional; however, did you know that they are not the only types of singing lessons available?
If you feel sick and tired of playing the same Christmas music every year, there's one thing you should know that the artists always try to put out the albums of their new own versions of traditional Christmas songs. The songs may be the same every year, but the artists put their own takes on them to make them fresh.
If you're just in the beginner faze of learning how to play guitar or you want to learn it then you need to start with the basics. You don't want to rush into it so therefore we want to start with some baby steps. This article is for complete beginners who have had little or no experience playing the guitar. Learn some tips to help make learning the guitar a little easier for you.
Acoustic guitars are great to play and very family- and neighbor-friendly but beginner acoustic guitar players need to be careful when buying their first instrument. This article covers the main points you need to think about as a beginner guitar buyer.
 
Article Directory Home All Categories Arts And Entertainment Music
 

Can't find what you're looking for? Try Google Search!
 
Copyright © 2005 - by Larry Lim, Singapore - Article Search Engine Directory at ArticleSphere.com™
All Rights Reserved Worldwide. All Trademarks and Servicemarks are the property of the respective owners.

Afrikaans Albanian Arabic Belarusian Bulgarian Catalan Chinese (Simplified) Chinese (Traditional) Croatian Czech Danish German English Estonian Filipino Finnish French Galician Greek Hebrew Hindi Hungarian Icelandic Indonesian Irish Italiano Japanese Korean Latvian Lithuanian Macedonian Malay Maltese Dutch Norwegian Persian Polish Portuguese Romanian Russian Serbian Slovak Slovenian Spanish Swahili Swedish Thai Turkish Ukrainian Vietnamese Welsh Yiddish