social/reddit

This is something I’ve struggled with, having spent most of my short jazz career focused on gypsy jazz.

Later when I started to be drawn to more modern jazz, and started playing with a straight ahead group, I felt very frustrated that the gypsy style and vocabulary was holding me back. It’s better than nothing (I can still play the changes) but what I play to me ends up often sounding cheesy, simple, or old-timey. It’s hard to describe but it just doesn’t seem to fit the vibe.

As I’ve tried to focus on making the transition I’ve come to the conclusion that while much of the issue is the note choices themselves (the vocabulary and phrases, often focused on simple arpeggios and chromaticism), there’s also a big part that’s coming from the right hand picking. It took a lot to retrain myself to do gypsy picking passably well, but trying to go modern with an electric guitar I find the same style sounds too heavy-handed. There’s also something going on where I think gypsy jazz soloists are often emphasizing the on-beats (with downstrokes), and the more modern phrasing is one that emphasizes the off-beats and should feel more bouncey and loose, with more dynamic range, rather than strong, stiff, and attack-y.

Having said all that, there’s a big part of this that’s probably a result of my own lack of experience in both styles. I play professionally, but my skill level is probably not what you imagine when you think “professional jazz guitarist”, gypsy jazz or otherwise. There are plenty of examples of gypsy jazz guitarists who do perfectly well playing in more modern contexts (Biréli Lagrène, Adrien Moignard, come to mind…) so it’s definitely possible for those vocabularies to co-exist. But for me there is a switch that I’m not really able to flip yet.