CD review – Move by Bireli Lagrene

I have had this CD for a while now but was listening to it again today and reminding myself how good it is. The band is Bireli, Hono Winterstein on rhythm guitar, Franck Wolf on various saxophones and Diego Imbert on double bass. Many of the tunes are core gypsy jazz repertoire – Clair de Lune, Troublant Bolero etc., but others are originals or bebop tunes (like the title track). The opening track is a quirky blues head written by Diego Imbert with an idosyncratic rhythm which then launches into storming swinging blues changes. Bireli really lets rip on this with some wild outside playing but holds it all down with some classic blues and gypsy jazz phrases. There isn’t a bad track on the CD and I have been listening to it for months without any lessening of my enjoyment – highly recommended.

CD review – Acoustic Spirit by Romane

As I often do I found this CD on Amazon and that company does seem a great source of really rather specialist CDs. This is a double CD with a difference – one CD is a usual (though there is noting ‘usual’ about the standard of the music) audio CD of great gyspy jazz by Romane and a cracking band. The other CD contains all the tracks from the first but with the lead instruments removed so you can use it as a playalong for practice, and as all the compositions are by Romane this CD also contains all the written parts for lead and rhythm section. Goodness knows how long it took to put this project together but all gypsy jazz players should be grateful for such a greast learning resource.

The music on the first CD is great and well worth the price even if you have no interest in the 2nd CD.

CD review – Source Manouche by Marcel Loeffler

It is always worth going back to a CD which on first listening doesn’t appeal. I bought this CD because there was link to it on Amazon from other Bireli Lagrene CDs I had been viewing. It was a busy day and I just selected the two tracks with Bireli and listened to those, they were good but they were accordion and electric guitar as a duo and they weren’t in the mainstream gypsy jazz style. I rather forgot about the CD until a couple of weeks ago when I was tidying up our house and I found it again, I put it on and listened whilst I went about my work. There are a rather eclectic selection of tunes and styles (a vocalist singing ‘Joshua Fit the Battle of Jericho’ anyone?) but there are many great gypsy jazz tracks with some great playing by Marcel Loeffler on accordeon and Yorgui Loeffler on lead guitar, with many other Loefflers on rhythm guitars. Marcel Loeffler is a new player to me and it is always good to find another virtuosic button accordeon player to listen to.

Gypsy jazz guitar on YouTube

I’ve been a bit slow in catching up with the YouTube phenomenon. Shez Sherdan, the lead guitarist in our band Djangoism, told me about it. He had been touring with Richard Hawley and found that video footage of a concert they had played in Torino was on YouTube by the time they got back to the UK!

Looking for gypsy jazz on YouTube my searches come up with a number of different categories. There are clips from commercially available DVDs, such as Bireli Lagrene Live in Paris, which misguided fans have placed on YouTube and which amount to video piracy. There are amateur clips of amateurs playing gypsy jazz rather badly, but then everyone has to start somewhere. The most interesting category for gypsy jazz guitar fans are private recordings of well-known players, hopefully with their permission, and little known TV broadcasts.

I have found some excellent clips of Jimmy Rosenberg playing with Gustav Lungren (who posted the clips) and probably Andreas Oberg, I Can’t Give You Anything But Love and China Boy are good. There is also the famous video of Jimmy Rosenberg as a child when his guitar is bigger than he is, and one when he is bit older.

One clip I have enjoyed a lot is John McLaughlin and Bireli Lagrene playing All Blues on a French TV show. I like the contrast between the rather thin tone of John McLaughlin’s electric 335 guitar and the full warm sound from Bireli’s acoustic but then I am becoming an acoustic guitar snob with my new Gitane.

Guitar versus clarinet part 2

In my first discussion of the differences between playing the guitar and clarinet my conclusions seemed to be that in many ways the guitar was physically easier to play but more difficult to produce coherent improvisations simply because it was easier to play, for example semitone modulations in a tune could be accommodated with no more consideration than sliding up or down a fret. Some further time playing the clarinet has made me revise this assessment to conclude that it is more difficult to play inventive and well-structured improvisations on the guitar simply because it is more difficult to play.

The reason for this difficulty is the duplication of notes on the guitar fretboard. On a clarinet if I want to play a middle C there is only one possible fingering so there is an indivisible link between the sound of middle C and that fingering, and this can be reinforced by many different practice techniques. If I had perfect pitch (which I don’t have by a distance of many light years) then with some practice I could play any note on the clarinet that I heard without having to worry about the fingerings (there are a few alternative fingerings on the bottom keys but we can ignore that for the moment).

On a guitar there are many ways to play a middle C. 1st fret on the B string, 5th fret on the G string, 10th fret on the D string and 15th fret on the A string. Each of those notes could be fretted using one of four left hand fingers giving a total of 16 different fingerings! Mick Goodrick, in his thoughtful book The Advancing Guitarist, has likened playing the guitar to playing 6 chromatic keyboards offset to each other by intervals of a fifth except of course between the G and B string when it is a fourth. This makes it very difficult to establish any clear link between the pitch of a note and its fingering on the guitar and may account for much of the mind-numbingly boring jazz guitar that is played using a limited repertoire of licks in fixed patterns based on strict positional (i.e. across the fretboard rather than up and down it) playing.

Interestingly the techniques used in gypsy jazz guitar seem to get round this problem by using a limited range of strings and fingerings because the techniques are much more based on movement up and down the fretboard rather than across it. We know that Django could only use two of his left hand fingers and most current players seem to use only three for the vast majority of time so that immediately reduces the fingering possibilities by at least 25%. On the acoustic gypsy jazz guitar many notes, though theoretically possible such as a middle C on the 15th fret of the A string, are not practical either through lack of access to the fretboard or more likely insufficient volume to cut through the sound of the rhythm guitar. This has lead to techniques with big movements up and down the fretboard using usually the highest available string for the note required which gives far more chance of establishing a firm relationship between that note and its fingering. Perhaps this is why much gypsy jazz guitar sounds so much more structured and purposeful than many fully electric jazz guitar recordings?

One area where the guitar holds a massive advantage over the clarinet, or any other wind instrument, is the relationship between relative pitch of notes and their fingering. On the guitar I know that if I play one note on any string and another note two frets higher on the string above (with the exception of the G/B string combination) then those notes will produce an interval of a perfect fifth. On the clarinet there is no clear relationship between fingering and interval, especially when moving between the upper and lower registers which overblows by a twelfth rather than the octave that saxophones and flutes do. I am not sure of guitarists can take full advantage of this property when playing at fast tempos but when listening to gypsy jazz guitarists playing ballads you can often hear them ‘stretching’ for a note which they know is there to be played but which lies outside any usual pattern that they use. A great example of this is the beginning of Lolo Meier’s solo on ‘I surrender dear’ where he takes a little motif and shifts the second note of the repetition of the motif up to accommodate the underlying chord change and to construct a very melodic phrase.

Playing the clarinet and guitar – analogies and differences

We are on holiday in France for a couple of weeks and there wasn’t room to bring a guitar (nor any necessity since I don’t have a gig immediately on our return) so I brought my clarinet instead. I had some classical training on the clarinet as a teenager but have not played it consistently since, a period of some 30 years, and have never developed a jazz vocabulary on it. Although I haven’t made much progress during this short holiday the process has revealed some interesting analogies and differences with playing guitar.

The first and most obvious difference is the sheer physicality of playing a wind instrument. Picking up the clarinet again after such a long absence revealed the effort of making any sound apart from a squeak or a wheeze. Even with weak reeds I can only play it for a maximum of 15 minutes without my lip and palatal muscles reaching overload failure, and of course the length of every phrase is dependent on the amount of breath I have. This contrasts strongly with the relative ease that sound can be produced from a guitar, the length of time it can be played and the lack of any physical restraint on the length of phrase. This difference can produce some musical deficiencies in guitarists – because they don’t have to work hard for every note they can sometimes play too many notes without much musical direction. Glaring examples of this occurred when guitarists translated bebop phrases onto the fully electric guitar with its relatively flat sound due to lack of upper harmonics (a function of flat wound strings and amplifiers with a mid-range bias). There are many very dull recordings of guitarists running through endless bebop licks with no breaks between them, I won’t name the culprits as 75% of jazz guitar CDs exhibit this. I think that gypsy jazz guitar playing has less tendency to this because the acoustic nature of the instruments, with relatively high string action and thick heavy plectra, do make it more of a physical effort to play, and the arpeggiated nature of many gypsy jazz phrases ensures a rapid movement up and down the fretboard and a phrase has to end due to the lack of any further higher or lower notes.

I have been learning the Django tune ‘Daphne’ on the clarinet which has an A section in the key of E major (when transposed for a Bb instrument such as the clarinet) and a B section a semitone higher in F major. On the guitar the transition between the A and B sections can be very simple – just slide up a fret with the same fingering for most of the tune and any improvisation. On the clarinet it is very different, only two notes are common to both scales (E and A) so the fingering of five notes in the scale have to change with the transition. The E major and F major scales feel completely different to play, the E major scale uses lots of side keys to sharpen the notes whereas the F major scale is the ‘natural’ scale of the Bb clarinet so doesn’t use any side keys, just the open fingerholes. The semitone shift upwards or downwards is a powerful musical device which can be readily perceived by almost any listener whether they have any musical training or not, it give the music a real lift. However the difference in feel on the guitar is not very great if one just shifts up a fret. Perhaps a better way to approach fingering these sections would be to use the same finger on the same fret for the common notes E and A and move the other notes. This should produce the same sensation as the clarinet fingering – I will try it out when I next have a guitar in my hands.

My final observation, at the moment, is the way in which one’s listening focus changes when playing a different instrument. One might imagine that one would listen to music in an even-handed sort of way giving equal attention to all the instruments, or the ensemble as a whole. In reality this is very rarely the case and each listener will have a very different focus when listening to music. For people who don’t play instruments this focus will presumably be selected by sounds that they have found to be to their liking in the past. In many ways the best way to listen to a piece of music might be as a completely naïve listener who cannot even distinguish between the sounds of different instruments – in that way the whole ensemble could be appreciated without any preconceived focus. Unfortunately for instrumentalists listening to music often occurs in a highly focussed and rather conscious manner listening to the instrument which one plays to see what the player is ‘doing’. It was very interesting for me to see how quickly this focus can shift. When listening to gypsy jazz recordings I generally focus on the guitars, and often the rhythm guitar since that is my predominant mode of playing. After only 2 days of playing scales on the clarinet I found myself picking out the clarinet on any gypsy jazz recording on which it is present and hearing nuances of phrasing and tone that I hadn’t perceived before. It has made me even more impressed by some modern gypsy jazz clarinettists especially Andre Donni on Lolo Meier’s Hondarribia recording.

Another Bireli Lagrene DVD – but don’t add it to your shopping list

A few posts ago I recommended Bireli Lagrene’s DVDs Live in Paris and Bireli Lagrene and Friends. These really are essential viewing/listening for any fan of gypsy jazz guitar. In my enthusiasm for more I ordered Django: a jazz tribute starring Bireli Lagrene and Babik Reinhardt. Unfortunately this DVD is not so successful. Its sole stars are Bireli and Babik, i.e. it is a jazz guitar duo, one of my least favourite combinations – even Jim Hall and Pat Metheny didn’t really do it for me. Bireli plays a solid body electric guitar and three of the four tunes on this 26 minute DVD are originals which mainly consist of dominant 7 sus 4 vamps with much mindless widdling up and down the guitar necks, impressive gymnastics but less impressive music. We can’t blame Bireli or Babik – the DVD has few details but it seems to be recorded a long time ago in the afternoon in a cafe with a fairly uninterested audience. We can blame the production company for putting this DVD out in 2005 and trying to cash in on Bireli’s fame and Babik’s heritage.

The Django ’shuffle’

I’m not sure if the Django ’shuffle’ is its official name but everyone will have heard it on Django Reinhardt recordings – Django takes a solo and when he has finished he starts playing a rhythm behind the next soloist (often Stephane Grapelli) which lifts the whole band and feels as though the pace has suddenly accelerated though the actual time remains steady.

It has taken me a while, and Robin Nolan’s books, to realise what is happening here. The rhythm is still the straight four beats to the bar with accents on the second and fourth beats but instead of two upstrokes a bar, after the second and fourth beats, there are upstrokes after every beat. The difficulty of playing this rhthym, and it does seem very difficult, is to keep the upstrokes light on damped strings whilst letting the notes ring a bit on the first and third beats and whilst putting a strong accent on the second and fourth beats. If any of these elements goes awry, especially if you lose the emphasis on the second and fourth beats, all the swing is lost and it sounds dreadful.

I have found it a little like the patting your head whilst making circles on your tummy type of activity – I can hold it together for a while but then it unravels and is hard to get back again without stopping. I have found that switching my attention between the three elements, focussing on one element at a time, helps to keep it together but it is going to need a lot more practice. One problem I have encountered is the plectrum moving around and being unable to correct this. I use the fabulous Wegen picks favoured by many gypsy jazz guitarists which have a depression for the thumb and deep ridges on either side so there shouldn’t be too much problem with grip. What I think happens with almost all players is that the plectrum is always moving around but we unconsciously rearrange it in our fingers, however the only usual gaps in gypsy jazz rhythm are the two spaces a bar where there aren’t upstrokes and these disappear in the Django shuffle.

One unexpected benefit of practising this rhythm is that when I switch back to standard rhythm it all sounds more swingy than before.

Romane

Still following the trail of gyspy jazz guitarists that I have not yet heard I came across Romane, doubtless a well-known musician in France but very few people have heard of him in the UK. I discovered him because he persuaded Tchavolo Schmitt to record his solo CD Alors Voila and played rhythm guitar on it. I have mentioned before their excellent duet which is included as a bonus video clip. I have since bought a few Romane CDs and have been listening to his French Guitar a lot recently.

This CD features an all acoustic line-up with two rhythm guitars, double bass, Romane and a superb young pianist/violinist – Christophe Cravero. What is interesting is the variety of music that can be played with such a band – there is everything from fast bebop heads through to slow ballads and, more surprisingly, funk tunes with the backing guitars playing pitchless rhythms imitating snare drums. It all works very well despite its electicism and many of the tunes are Romane originals.

The tempo threshold – what is yours?

Today I was practising rhythm guitar with some of Robin Nolan’s playalongs. I was looking at a different harmonisation of Dark Eyes. The chord shapes that I have been using have an A on the 6th string for both the A7 and Dm chords which inadvertently creates a dominant pedal over the first six bars of every chorus whereas we would prefer to reserve such a pedal for occasional use near the climax of a solo. The chord shapes in Robin Nolan’s book are musically much better and also have less of a finger stretch so I won’t wear my left hand out so much during a gig.

The playalong has two Dark Eyes tracks – one at 194 beats per minute and the other at 240 beats per minute. I could manage to play in tempo with both but I noticed that there was a clear threshold between the two. At 194 bpm I could keep in tempo very easily, even with some loose technique such as elbow movement of the right arm. At 240 bpm I could only keep in tempo by using the best technique I have – all movement from the right wrist, no unnecessary movement outside the range of the strings etc. I don’t know whether everyone finds the same thing at around these tempos or whether everyone has a different tempo threshold – what is important is that everyone should find their threshold and practice a lot above it to keep their technique tight and gig-ready.