Introduction to Gypsy Jazz Guitar

1. Introduction to Django Reinhardt and Gypsy Jazz Guitar: so Django Reinhardt is widely considered to be one of the greatest guitar players who ever lived. He was a jazz virtual so from Europe, active around like 19 that he was born in 1910 and he died in 1952. So you know that whole time he was on the earth. He was playing guitar pretty much since he was 12. He was a working musician. Jango was one of the first European jazz musicians to be taken seriously around the world. Jang Go's music and is playing and his technique and style. I had a huge influence on musicians who came after him. Jangles music was so influential that inspired an entire genre of musicians to play in his style. So Gypsy Swing is usually played on acoustic guitars told, almost always acoustic. There's like acoustic guitars, acoustic violin, maybe upright bass, the core of the aesthetic of the styles, this acoustic kind of pulse in gypsy jazz. The guitar plays a lot of roles. The guitar is the drums, and it's also the company accompaniment. It's the background music, and it creates the rhythm. For the most part, this music is about the feeling in the expression. Yes, the ideas congee get complex, but it's less of an intellectual thing. And mawr of, ah, just a feeling of the groove in the music. And it's also about emotional impressions. Django composed some pieces that were very impressionistic like No watch, which means clouds in French. And that piece was about had a had a kind of bittersweet quality to it. So he's very, very much kind of like there's a romantic aspect to his music. This music is involved. You're not gonna learn it overnight. It takes a lot of work you're gonna take. It's gonna take a lot of practice, and you might have to completely change your way of thinking about the guitar. But the results are worth it. For those of you who are completely new to playing guitar learning, this style will enable you to play almost any style of music. It's one of the most demanding styles, but it's also one of the most freeing styles to learn. For those of you who have were coming to Gypsy jazz from another type of guitar playing, you might have to think about this in some ways as learning a new instrument you're gonna be able to incorporate some of your ideas from your past playing. But there's gonna be some big changes that you're gonna have to make in your playing, probably to be able to play this style. My goal for this course is to get you gig ready. So that, for example, if I had to call you to play a gig T Hey, man, we gotta get tight. Can you come and play? You'll be able to at the very least, accompany me on the guitar playing rhythm And then as we progress, you're going to be able to so low and trade solos with me and this kind of thing. Of course, you know, this could be just for you to play for fun or to perform for your friends doesn't have to Professional. But that's hot designed this course for some of you. This stuff might click really quickly for others. It's gonna It is gonna take a lot of time, but in general the rule is amore time and dedicated practice. He put into this the more that you're gonna get out of it and the faster you're gonna progress. First, we're gonna work on rhythm there about six different styles main styles of rhythm playing in gypsy guitar. The reason we're gonna learn rhythm first is because technique we use for the rhythm and the chords lay the foundation for the soloing. So you need to learn all that stuff before we get Solan. That said, I'm gonna teach you soloing at the same time so that you can build both. 2. Introduction to Right Hand Technique: my number one rule for Gypsy jazz is that everything that we do has to feel loose. This goes for the technique as well as the flow of the ideas and the soloing on the rhythm . By loose I mean, there should be no tension in your body and in your mind when you're playing, everything should just flow really easily. There should be nothing blocking music from flowing through you to the audience and back and forth. You have to be like a conduit for the music. In my way of playing this music, I keep my wrist loose, and arm is doing all the work. And this is true for the cords for the rhythm. And the solo jangle was playing before the electric guitar came out, and he's trying to get the most sound out of the guitar as possible. I found that the way to do that is to use the power of your arm to get the notes to pop out one really smack every note with the power of your arm, but you keep your wrist loose when you're doing that without the guitar, the motion of my wrist is gonna It's gonna look like this. My wrist is completely loose. My hand is like a dead weight. And my arm is doing is swinging everything okay? It's like that. Here's how it looks with the guitar and no pick slopping around on the guitar. Since we're gonna be throwing our arm around, you need to hold the guitar in a way so that it stays still. The guitar is gonna rest on your leg like this, and it's gonna be the neck is going to be pretty even with the horizons. Don't play like this, you know, And you're not gonna point like this too much. You're going to make contact with the guitar right here where your elbow joint is. The reason for this is that we want to be able to move to swing or arm around like a pendulum. When we play with the loose wrist. Always loose risk. That's the number one rule is loose. You want to think of the guitar as a drum? Drummers air playing like this. They don't play from their wrist so much, they use their entire arm. And at least that's how it looks to me and the risks look loose. So where Since this is a rhythm section here, we want to play it like that when you keep your wrist loose, Pick can get intertwined with strings. This creates tension, and when it releases, there's a lot of power that comes out and goes into the guitar from the strings. Here's the difference between the alternating technique on using your arm. As you can see, I'm doing this technique for single notes. Also, this is also the rhythm. Check out the difference when I swing my arm like this versus this, there's much more rotation in the wrists when you come at it with an L shape, almost like you're hugging the guitar. I never wanna do this because if you do this, your hand is gonna lock up. So here are a couple things you want toe. Watch out for when you're trying to get this technique down. You don't want to play like this from your wrist, and you don't want to be doing like a like a scooping motion like that. Like you're scooping ice cream. You don't want to be doing a turning a key motion like that. Your wrist should be totally loose and your arm is going to be doing all the work. It's almost a ziff you're doing whipping motion with your hand. Your hand is a dead weight. It's as if you're putting out a match. We're gonna brush the strings very lightly, going up and then let your hand droop down like that. So again, we're gonna do this like this. Let your fingers get caught in the strings. Back your fingers. So your nails air touching the strings, brushing against strings like this. My risk is totally loose right now, that little watery that we need to do that sound That's good. That means your risk is loose. Not now. We're not doing this. We're not going turning a key or anything like that. Um, the idea is that if you want your if you want your hand to go up here, if you want to pick to go up this high, you actually have to lift your hand up that high. Uh, you're not gonna reach from over here like that to get it. First, we're gonna make a trigger with her index finger trigger finger like that's there's a little ridge right here. Important thing here to notices the pick is gonna rest right there. It's gonna be supported by this, uh, curve right there. Then we put the pick there, so it rests right there, and we come over it with our thumb like that. So it's now the pick is supported over here. When I do a down stroke, it's going to be supported by the thumb. When I do upstroke, it's gonna be supported by that ridge area right there. So it's think of it as if your ah, make it, make the trigger and in your image, come down on it with your thumb like that. Looks like that it should look as if you're ah, pouring some tea. See in my hand is ah like this. You see, my thumb is curved like that. One way to Teoh. Hold the pick us to think about it like this. There's a bone right there that you're going to connect with the pick right there with that bone and this thing right here in this area. So I think that but the guitar on your leg rest your arm here. So the guitar the about is right where the elbow is, and you're gonna be swing your right hand around a lot. So you don't want to be. You want to hold the guitar, make sure the guitars not moving around a lot. Okay, I'm sitting down. Keep your wrist loose and floppy for both the single notes and the chords. Make sure there's an L shape here. Don't ever flatten your wrist out like this or you're not gonna get any rotation. Always like this. That trigger finger with the with the index pick here. Come over it like you're excusing cheek with this. That if I want to pick to go up here, have to actually bring my arm up there. We'll have to throw my hand up like that to get up that high. I can't. I'm not gonna I'm not going to scoop up like that. I actually to bring you gotta bring your arm up like that. So the first exercise with the pick is gonna be similar to what we do without the picks. Using your arm, lift your hand and the pick up to the high e right there. And just keep your rhesus and that it just brushed the strings that then for the down stroke, we're going to do the same thing, but in reverse. Let your hand is drop. Let the pig catcher string pushed through with, uh, with your arm. Keep your wrist loose the whole time Reduce again. So up is like this Down is like this, You know you're doing it right if you get that watery sound. If it sounds like this, it's That means you have a stiff wrist If you get this like it's too heavy. You want it to be like this. All right, Watery sound not way. Don't want it to be harsh. We want to be liquid and flowing. 3. Rhythm: La Pompe and Minor Swing: The main rhythm in this music is called the pump. Let pump in French means the pump. It sounds like this pump has two main parts. The first part is a lump, and the next part is a quack. So it's first, we're going to focus on the right hand, and we're gonna use the left hand just to mute the strings. We're gonna treat the guitar just like a drum. We're gonna break down the pump into three parts and then bring them all together. The first part of the pump is the upstroke. My wrist is loose and I bring up my hand through the strings like that. The second part is a vamp with a loose risk. You wanna rake through the strings to get the growling sound like this? That's the So the first part is the Grace note and then one to now I'm not going down all the way like that. I'm just going that, uh and then the third part of the pump is the flak. It's a whipping motion. So where you have to do is actually that actually four parts now to do the whipping motion , you have to consider this you have to bring your hand up really high. So that so if if the first part is this, the second part is the third part is gonna be Just bring your hand up there and the fourth part is gonna be whipping down into the strings like this. Give it You want to give it a good chop? Gonna bring your hand up here and shop. Here are the four parts together 123 41 When we do a whoomp, then lift and then shop. You want to bring your hand up here and then come up really high and shops you can chop down into the guitar You want to playing towards the guitar, into the guitar, not away from the guitar, Always into the guitar. Now we're gonna connect part one and two. Whereas before we went like this one, now we're gonna do connect them and make them one motion like this. Think of this upstroke as just an accent that happens right before the one hits the before the one the first beat or the third beat hits since. Like this feel the rhythm can change depending on how you connect the upstroke with that first hit. If I have a lot of space between the upstroke and that first hit, it has more of kind of an old Django A sound like this. But if I connect the upstroke, if I bring the upstroke really, really close to the first hit, it's gonna have more of a brushy kind of sound almost in a very kind of tight sound. Another way to think about it is like this. You're flopping into that first hit. So if you could see what's happening here, my my hand just going up and then I'm flopping my wrist over like this again. I'm not. I'm not using my wrist. Mosul's at all. I'm doing my arms doing all the work, but because I have this l shaped my hand, it's gonna flop around, right? So you want to flap like this, flap into the string? Let's take that and then into the strings, Not a way. You don't want to do this notes in loose risk without the pick. It looks like this that with the pick, make it into one motion. So we've seen one and two together. We're gonna put three and four together three was Bring it up and then four was chopped. Now we're just gonna make make it into one thing, like a chop like that. So one and two is like this three and four like this. So it's Reagan's. It's flat flop chop thing. You connect them and you get the pump. So here's one and 23 and four. Depending on how fast the tempo is, you'll find that you will be your range of motion is increase or decrease. But the pick is always going to be The action on the pick is always gonna be happening within the strings with the chop. - Okay . Okay. I'm, uh, e Now that you have the right hand down, we're gonna connect it with the left hand. The first chord we're going to use his a minor six. This is kind of one of the bread and butter cords of gypsy jazz. You play it like this, you put your second finger here. First thing we're here on Danube are the last three like this. Oh, it's for second finger and then mute thumb, first finger. And then a string gets muted by the first finger. Second vendors here we're gonna go for a very staccato feel. Very clean, staccato feel for this, the pump. So trump, check, check. Here we go. Notice how the lump has a really kind of warm, growling sound, and then the check has a wacky kind of percussive. You want to think of it as almost like a kick drum. This there, left hand controls a lot of the dynamics in this music. If you want to come up with more energy in the right hand, make sure that the left hand is doing very staccato pumps. This. If you let the notes ring out too long and you're playing loud, it's gonna overcome the soloist. There's no room for any other music of you do that. If you want to let the Neutering out longer, you might want to play a little bit lighter with the right hand. Keep your ribs. Always keep your risk. This it's kind of cool. Jazz sound versus first practice all the parts separately. One Su three. Connect one and two and then connect three and four. Now connect all four of them. Always practice with the Metrodome, and any time you're learning something new, practice very slowly a minor six staccato, One of the most popular songs and gypsy jazz is minor. Swing by Django Minor Swing is made up of three chords. A minor, six way. Use the same shape for the next chord. D minor six. I can even use that same shape for the third chord, which is E seven only. When did you make it a little different? Instead of just playing the Lowy, we're gonna play the A stream is gonna look at this. Here's our a minor six chord eyes D minor six on. Then we use the same shape, but we're gonna change a little for the seven. So you're gonna actually take this middle finger and we're gonna grab these two strings here you aim for the middle of the A and the of the e and the A string. And if you go at an angle, it's it'll be easier. These two parts of your finger will be able to grab those two strings more easily. I am under 66 e seven. Now I see I'm at an angle not so much like this, but more like this sequence of the cords is going to be a minor six for two measures. Deem under six for two measures. E seven for two measures. A minor six for two measures. Deve Minor, six for two measures. Aim under six for two measures E seven for two measures and then a minor six for two measures. You can do it very slowly now you know how to play the pump and minor swing. 4. Rhythm: Gypsy Bossa and Bossa Dorado: So today we're gonna learn how to do the gypsy bossa rhythm. The typical Boston over rhythm might sound something like this. The gypsy Boston over them is more like this way. Focus on the right hand first. So using your left hand, mute the strings and we're just gonna go up and down with our right hand. We're gonna keep the wrist loose. I'm going to get a nice light texture going like this. We're trying to create a texture that you might hear in some Latin music. Notice how it doesn't swing. It's just very straight. That's really important for this rhythm. The right hand is just gonna be going up and down while the right hand is keeping the texture and the time going. The left 10 is the one that's gonna be providing all the accents. Let's start by just using playing a typical D minor chord. Once we get that right hand engine going, then we could start adding the left hand. When you first start learning this, you want to practice it very slowly. Don't try to accent with the right hand. Let the left hand do all the accents so you don't want to go like this, just get the right hand to go up and down. Let the left hand do all the accenting way. Try to not smooth rhythm or it's going to sound more like a mambo like this way. This way. Avoid playing this rhythm with too much force. You want to make sure that the texture of the right hand can always be heard along with the notes from the left hand. Keep that water. You won't hear that water A texture. It's almost like a shaker that you might hear in Latin music. An example of a gypsy jazz tune that uses this rhythm is bossa Dorado. The basic court progression for bossa Dorado is D minor, and then we're gonna do E seven thing we're gonna do. We can use that same shape almost to play G minor. Just make sure that you're not playing the scene out there. A seven. There's a few different ways to play a seven. However you want a finger, it is okay. I tend to play a seven with my thumb like this. So put my thumb down right here. Then I bar these three sorts thin mute, a string gets muted by my thumb bar this Put this finger down out here the second fair on. Then play this on, then mute the top on suits. You can also play it like this, like this, or even like this s so there's a lot of different ways to place up for the A section of Boston Dorado. We're gonna play D minor for two measures like this. They would play E seven for two measures G minor for one measure. Thin A seven for one measure D minor for one measure a seven for one measure thing. We're gonna repeat that again like this. Wait. Hold the D minor for two measures at the end. Like this Boston Dorados Bridge starts on D seven g minor, e seven a seven. Then it goes and plays another a section. So start with D minor. Theo way. The form of the song is a B a When you're playing these Latin rhythms and gypsy jazz, the range of motion is dictated by the tempo If I'm playing a very slow tempo my range of motion is gonna be pretty big like this. As I speed up the range of motion gets smaller. Notice how you could still hear that wet texture. That's because my wrist was loose and I wasn't playing too hard. I'm swinging my arm back and forth in order to keep the momentum going. While I'm playing this rhythm, I usually move the cord before the one of the next court hits. So, for example, so you see, I moved to the East seven before the one here, switching back and forth between D Minor and E seven. Another big trick for this rhythm is to switch on the mute. So if I have the chords ringing out like this E, I want to switch during that mute, wait until the one hits to switch. Then you're gonna end up. You might end up slowing the tempo down, so it might sound like something like this. It's very hard Teoh kind of switch cords. When you do that, the mute actually gives you some some cover to switch. If I want to switch from East seven a G minor, it'll be a lot easier if I do it during the mute. Compare that to switching on the way it can get kind of messy, and sometimes when people are first learning this rhythm that trying to switch on the one actually slows them down so you'll start to hear the tempo. Dragging the way to keep the tempo consistent is to switch on the mute. Now you know how to play the gypsy bossa and bossa Dorado. 5. Rhythm: Waltz: that way. Thieves way, Theo. Gypsy waltz Rhythm is pretty simple. It's got three parts. The first part is a lump. Second part is a check. Third part is a check. First we're gonna learn how to do the right and so use your left hand to mute the strings and we're going to do an upstroke sort of like we did with that pump and they're going to do a bump. So that's gonna be the first hit for the waltz. So on the one part of the waltz is gonna be a like that. The second part is gonna be the Chak Chak part. So it's 123123 Room check check from check check. It is gonna be like this So it's basically just two hits chop so two and two chops. Pretty simple. We're not going to use this room. Chop chop, right hand rhythm. If we're using open strings, we're gonna get to that in a second. But first we're going to use simple chords bark words like this. So the left hand Let's just make a e minor simply minor chord so that you can bar these two strings with your index finger, so it's gonna sound like this. So what's happening here is I'm giving a little bit more of a bump on that one on the two notes. After that, the two chords after that arm or staccato So it's Ah, that's a very aggressive Walt sound To get a more folky Gypsy jazz waltz feel you can use the open strings. A lot of the Walters and this genre are in e minor, which is great. That means we can get that really 20 0 sound. Now, if you notice I'm actually playing this e minor chord with one finger, which is great because it means I could do this Notice that I'm not chopping super hard like this. The reason I'm not doing that is because we're using open strings. And if the strings ring out, you probably need to play with a little less power to give room for the soloist. So Ah, a little lighter, okay? And I'm also during this thing right here. I'm bouncing back and forth between. This is also an introduction to single note picking. The first note that we play in this is actually just on one string. So we're gonna use the same technique that we're using the play chords. But we're gonna put that into one string to do this, they're gonna keep your wrist loose. You're gonna throw your hand up just as if you were gonna play chords. But we're gonna aim just into that one into that low e string like this. So I'm up here, I throw my hand up. My wrist is loose like this on the picked cuts right through the string and lands on rests on the next string. See that? My wrist is his wrist still loose? I'm not. And I'm not playing like this. I'm not going from my wrist and I'm not doing with a stiff wrist going very slowly. We're gonna play this e minor like this is going to take that first finger bar these two strings on, we're gonna go back and forth between opening on, were in use your second finger to play the G note right there on the low eastern way. It might take a while to get the hang of playing single notes like this. Uh, but that's the basis for all the right hand picking. Here's a comparison between the more closed cord versus the open. 1st 1 has a more tight, aggressive sound, and the 2nd 1 is kind of a more folky, light kind of background sound. I want to keep that watery sound belling. Also keep your wrist loose. Now you know how to play the Walter of them in Gypsy jazz. 6. Rhythm: Bolero: we're gonna learn to play the gypsy bolero. Since we're playing the guitar like a drum, we can think about it as a drum So the rhythm is gonna be boom Bye bye. That up that boom back boom back boom Bob about that boom Mute the neck with your left hand but with first hit is gonna be the kick drum. Then we do a little drumroll and then we do a snare and then a kick drum Come, and then a snare Check. Check, check, Check. That's room jacketed Jack voom voom check. That's the kind of feel for the rhythm for the role we're gonna go down, up, down, up like this Keep your wrist loose And the trick to do the role is to not try to hit all the strings. You wanna just aim for, like, three strings in the middle like this? And the reason is because it's very hard, Teoh due to hit all the strings when you're gonna be playing that role so fast, it's very hard to go like that. So we usually just go really kind of light, quick little role that happens in the middle strings. So the first is a booth. Second is like that. Keep your wrist loose. Really important. Gonna go down, up, down, up. But we're gonna aim on Lee for, like, these three strings. Maybe the first part is that bump, then the role in the Czech and then a jump, and then a check and another bump and then a check like this. Here's how it sounds up to speed for the left hand. We're going to use any major six chord. Play it like this. Take your middle finger like this, aim in between the strings and go at an angle so that you're so your finger can grab the two strings. Like that thing, we're gonna do the same thing. But with our first finger on the next two strings on there, we're gonna use our third finger to grab the top. Oh, Now, as you can see, this finger is got a kind of, like hook like that. This one's going straight down, and this one is flattened out a little bit like this. Grab here like that here and then here. This thing that's a major six. We're going to try to keep the right hand dynamics for this rhythm and all the other rhythms. Pretty even. We want to just kind of give a nice texture with the right hand and let the left hand do all the accenting. Right? So in this case, we have a very major six on We're not gonna go like this with right hand. We're not gonna try to do all the boom bap boom pops up stuff so much with the right hand, we're gonna try toe, see if we can get that feel with the left hand. So it's your bump, nice and staccato, but just enough to let the notes ring out just enough to get him average or roll. Let the hold down the left hand for the role like this. And at the end of the last, we're gonna let that we're gonna make that like a staccato. So here's a bump. Then we do data did that. It's like a drum roll like this. It's trump. And then another chop and another bump chop. Keep the right hand pretty even. Don't do this. Instead, use the left hand to do those accents. When you first learned this rhythm, play it very slowly played at a more normal tempo. It'll sound something like this. Theo. Notice how I'm letting the notes ring out a little bit more on the end part of the rhythm on this part, it's create a little bit of a contest between that Buczek room check. Some people create that drumroll effect by pushing through the strings on the second part of the rhythm like this way to do that as you do the bump on you push the oh, and then you go like that for I think that's just another kind of fun way to play the bolero. Things to remember are to keep the dynamics pretty flat with right hand and use the left hand to do the accents. And here we go way keep your right hand loose like that. Now you know how to play the bolero rhythm in Gypsy jazz. 7. Rhythm: Rhumba: in this lesson, we're gonna learn how to play the gypsy rumba. First we're gonna focus on the right hand So use your left hand to meet the neck Similar to what we did with the gypsy bossa rhythm. We're going to create a shaker effect by just moving our right hand up and down like this. Once you get that texture going with the right hand we could do all the accents with the left hand. We're going to use an A seven chord. I call it the Big A seven chord to play this big a seven chord. I grabbed the Lowy with my thumb at the fifth fret Then I grab both the A and D strings at the seventh fret with my middle finger thing. Then I grabbed the G string at the sixth fret Then I use my ring finger to grab the B string at the eighth Fret I meet the high with that ring finger so it looks like this Notice the back of my hand. Uh, I'm ah letting my hand come around like this on the neck of the guitar. Here are the different parts of the rhythm. So we're gonna do it really slowly. First, get that right hand going way. One mistake that people make when they're first learning this rhythm and they're trying to speed up is they tend to do too much power with the right hand. Uh, instead of just keeping it loose and light and also ah, within this area, you want to keep it loose in light and keep that wet texture going, not Don't try to hit all the strings. Just keep keep the pick. Pick is gonna hang out, like in this area. But just keep your wrist list. So it's a practice getting fast. First practice the right hand very slowly like this. Okay, Yeah. You just up and down with the loose risk. Okay, Now I'm gonna speed up for demonstration purposes so you can see what it'll sound like as it goes through the different tempos. But when you speed up, you have to actually set the Metrodome at a slightly higher rate so that you can kind of get used comfortable with what it feels like to get up to those higher tempos. Yeah, e my wrist is this. I'm just hanging out in the middle of the strings, not trying to swing wildly around with it looks like I'm turning my arm like this, like with a turnkey motion from my wrist. But I'm not its That's just an illusion. It's really my risk is loose and just going up and down just a little bit with my arm like that, not going like this. And I'm not going with this difference like that. It just loose like that, nice and loose. If you want to increase the speed with the left hand, you have to practice as if you were playing really fast with the left hand. To do that, you have to play very staccato, cause that's what it would be like if we're playing this rhythm very quickly. Practice slowly with left hand, very staccato squeezes. So first, get this right and going, Yeah, now I'm going to do this. Squeezes notice how I'm not accenting with the right hand. I'm not going. Don't do that. Just keep it even. It's very important to learn this rhythm at a super slow tempo, and the way to work the Metrodome is you want to play at the super slow tempo until it just feels boring. That's when you know you can ratchet it up to the next, like maybe five beats or 10 beats per minute more So I'm gonna show you a knacks l aeration as if I was going through Ah, syriza different tempos. You're not gonna practice like this, but this is how ah, this is how it's gonna look and sounds you could just see. The difference is that the faster and slower tempos I'm gonna try to keep the pick in this area of the strings and I'm gonna keep my wrist loose. I'm gonna keep my range of motion pretty small, gonna play very slowly and notice that all the accents are coming from my left hand, which are doing very staccato squeezes. - One way to tell if you're doing this rhythm correctly is if you can hear the texture of the right hand on top of the left hand so you don't want to be that you want. You don't want the court to be playing so loud that you can't hear that watery texture. That watery texture should always be there that, like this, you'll know you're doing it wrong if you're playing too hard because the chords ringing out would be a lot louder than the watery texture like this that's super aggressive. Sometimes someone call for that. For most of the time, Gypsy chest is gonna be like this. You really hear that water sound, which is also gets kind of sloppy. And the rhythm gets, ah, kind of lopsided because I'm trying to hit all the strings. Don't do that. Just stay within this area. That's how you get really fast with it. Now you know how to play the gypsy rumba. 8. Rhythm: 6/8 Rhumba Waltz: in this lesson, we're gonna learn to play the Rumble Waltz or the 68 Volts in Gypsy Jess, similar to the bossa rhythm and similar to the 44 rumba. We're gonna drive this rhythm with our right hand going up and down like this. Keep your right hand wrist loose and do all the motion from your arm. Don't try to do the accents with the right hand, so don't do this. We're gonna let the left hand do all the accents to begin with. Learning this rather merchandise A simple e minor bark word. Here's the left hand pattern for the 68 waltz. Squeeze on the down, stroke on bute on the upstroke, then mute on the down stroke on Squeeze on the next, Upstroke on Ben Mute on the next down stroke on bute on the upstroke. Here's the pattern in time, so we just continue that rhythm like this. It has the texture of the gypsy rumba rhythm, but in a 34 or 68 kind of field, just like the rumba rhythm, we want to make sure that we're not gonna accent with the right hand as we speed up. We're not gonna try to get heavier with the right hand as we speed up keeping all the motion in this area with a loose wrist like this. Not like this. And we want to do all the accenting. The left hand practices really very slowly when you first learned and then incrementally speed up with the Metrodome. Here's an acceleration of the rhythm from slow to fast E Just like what we did with the gypsy rumba rhythm. You want to practice speeding up the left town by practicing it as if you were playing it really fast. That means doing very staccato Squeeze at a slow tempo. Now you know how to play the 68 Waltz or the Rumba Waltz. 9. The Rest Stroke / Downstroke: Now that you have the basics of comping down, we can get into single note plane, as was the case with rhythm playing. The main rule for single no playing is to keep your wrist loose. We're going to use the same technique that we used for the rhythm playing to play the single notes. This means that we're gonna be swinging our arm around. I mean, we're swinging it into each note. We're not going to be doing any alternate pickings. We're not gonna be playing like this. Uh, we're not going to be playing with stiff risks like this. Everything is going to be with a loose trist. First, we're gonna work on the down stroke. Unlike alternate picking that goes like this where the pick is going out away from the guitar, we're gonna play into the guitar. We're gonna do what's called a rest stroke rest. Stroke is when you play one string and the pick goes through that string and lands on the next string. So it's gonna look like this. Ah, uh uh. I'm like alternate picking. Where you just like the strings like that? There's actually two motions that are involved in making arrest note. The first step is to raise your arm. The second step is to let the pick drop through the string and land into the next string onto the A string like this? No, my wrist is loose. It might not look like that because I'm going so slow, but it really is. It's just flopping into that string like this. Oh, step one up. Step two down. You're gonna lift your arm up and you're going to just let it drop and pick is gonna catch a string on, then pull it. It's gonna pull the low e string and rest on the next train. The first step is to get some lift. See that loose wrist I'm not doing with this difference. And then down into the guitar, not away from the guitar like this. Do it again, up drop right into the guitar like that. It's very important when you're first learning this stuff to practice it very slowly so you can internalize the idea. We're gonna use the Metrodome. We're gonna set it to 50 beats per minute up the, uh uh Think of the down stroke as if you're hammering a nail. You're not gonna hammer a nail like this with a stiff wrist. You're gonna lift your arm up like this boom like that with a loose wrist. So we're gonna do the same thing on this Lowy so lifted up and you could see there's that. It's my hand is wiggling around, right? So that's good because it means it's loose should also practice in the mirror or videotape yourself so you can see that you're doing this. The number one rule is there should be no tension. So it should feel like that when you're playing, the pick is going to cut through the e string and land on the A string. The note should pop out of the guitar. It should ring out. It should sing. With a lot of energy like this, you can hear the overtones popping out of the guitar. This might seem totally weird to some of you who are used to alternate picking, but this is how to get the sound. First beat is gonna be up and then hit. Uh, like that once you get those two steps down separately, we're gonna connect them and make it into one whipping motion. Do this for a good amount of time and meditate on that. Ah, just very simple and slow on that one string. So you're doing that restaurant member going into the guitar like digging into the guitar with the loose wrist. Once you get the hang of doing the rest stroke on the low. We were going to do it on the A string, - dear . When you get to the high E, you can just let the pick go directly into the guitar like this. Don't try to stop it with your hand. Just let it continue. Don't worry about the pick scratching up the guitar. These guitars are meant to be played. Pick into the string. Don't pick away from it like that. Like this do like this. You might be eager to start playing fast and flashy stuff, but the best way to build towards that is to practice this really slowly. Once you get familiar with what it feels like to play arrest stroke Ah, you can start building up speed with that down stroke. The way to build up speed with the restaurant is to wait until the absolute last moment to initiate the movement. Compare these two ways of doing it in the first way. I'm going to slowly raise my arm and slowly come down into the string. There's not too much velocity in that. You're not gonna get so much sound of the guitar that way. To increase the power of the note, you can increase the velocity of it. Now, I'm gonna wait until the absolute last possible moment to hit that note. Difference is, I'm not raising my arm slowly to go into the string. I'm whipping it fast weightings that last moment to whip into practice each individual strings separately. And then once you can do each individual strings separately, you can start connecting them. If you can do four good restaurants on one string, then move it over to the next string. In this exercise, we're gonna do four on the Lowy, four on the A four on the D for in the G, four on the B and then four on the high E. When you're practicing, give yourself enough time to really get into this. You want to give yourself enough time, Teoh, lock in with the Metrodome. One way to lock in with Metrodome is to hear it in your mind. So as you're listening to it, you also imagine it. You almost sing it in your mind as your as your listening to it. And that will help you kind of lock in with it. If you consolidate. Play four notes on the Lowy Four notes on the A four notes on the D four notes in the G four notes on the B and then four notes on the high E. Then you can. We're gonna go in the other direction. This is the second exercise way, Way. Ah, it's very important that your hand be loose when you're doing this on this hand, you don't want to tighten up your fist in any kind of way. If you notice when Django plays, he sometimes please like this. It looks like his His finger is, ah, kind of touching his thumb like that. But other times he Hannah has his fingers out like this. Some of the musicians that I like like Jimmy Rosenberg. He has his ah, hand out like this stock low. Rosenberg plays a little bit like that so you could do either way. I tend to have my fingers out, and I use this finger kind of as an anchor, just gives me a little better since a placement when you're practicing, focus on timing, accuracy and tone. Now you know how to play the rest stroke. 10. String Crossing: If you want to move from one string to another while you're playing, you have to use a down stroke. We're never going to use an upstroke when we switch strings. For example, if you want to go from low to high, you can push through the strings. First, we're going to do arrest stroke on the Lowy on. Then we're gonna push through with our arm and a loose wrist through the other string. Click this restaurant. We can practice going from low strings to high strings by doing a restaurant on each one. Doing a restaurant on each string or pushing through the strings are two different ways that you can go from low strings, toe high strings. The general rule is that any time you want to switch strings, you have to do a down stroke. For example, if you wanted to go from the high E to the B G, D. A and E, you'd still have to do a down stroke. You wouldn't do upstroke so it would look like this. You wouldn't do this. They wouldn't do. You wouldn't do alternate picking like this. You can notice also a difference in the tone between when I do a restaurant versus doing alternate picking stroke when we use the restaurant, we're putting a lot more power into the string. And the fundamental tone is a lot louder in the overtones. Pop out more In the first part of the exercise, we're gonna practice going from high E to B G d a. And then Lowy remember to use the Metro. No, but it's gonna look like this. Then we're gonna practice going from B to the G to the D to the O. Then you're gonna start on the G string and go down the D string. But a and then the Lowy just by itself, point of starting on each individual string with this exercise is so you can get oriented with what it feels like. Toe start on different strings and change to different strings. Notice how my arm went from down here. Teoh up here as I went from the high e string to the lowest string. Keep that in mind. If you're gonna be going to these strings, you're gonna have to reorient your arm to make it easy so you can come down and hammer in tow, each different strength you want to do this? You don't want to do this. You can see my hand gets locked up and I can't hammer from there. And I'm also not using my arm. I'm using my wrist muscles toe hammer each strength. Instead of doing that, you gotta actually move your arm so you can go and hammer each string. In this exercise, we're gonna hammer a low string and then pushed through the high strings and then hammer the high strings down into the low strings. Remember to keep your wrist loose this whole time. And when you're pushing through and then going back up, you can make it a continuous loop. And you can also do it in a way so that you don't have to double hammer the low and high ease. You could do like this. You can also practice going from low to high e and high E to Lowy by hammering every string so you could do this. The's exercises will help you get familiar with what it feels like to move from string to string. Remember to always use a down stroke when you're switching and don't use an upstroke 11. Upstroke: Now that you've mastered the down stroke, it's time to talk about the upstroke. The truth is that we've been doing the upstroke the whole time. We just haven't been playing it. Remember when I said that any time you have to do a down stroke, you have to lift your arm up? Well, that is an upstroke. Here's our down, stroke resting and now to do an upstroke, I'm just gonna throw my hand through the string going up like this. My wrist is loose, so I'm resting on this A string. I'm gonna throw it up through the Eastern like that up. Strokes usually come after down strokes, if at all. Sometimes if the tempo of the song is slow enough, you might not even need to use up strokes. If the tempo where playing is too fast to play down strokes, you're gonna want to make that upstroke that you use to go into the down stroke. You're gonna want to actually like, play that Let's say I was playing. Maybe that last one was getting too fast for down strokes, so I would want to use up strokes there so it would be like this. See how much more easy that is. Another way to think about when to use the upstroke is to think about it as the upbeat in the music. Let's say you're getting into the groove of the song with your right hand and your strawman up and down. You don't want to interrupt that flow. And so maybe you want to start the phrase that you're about to play on an upstroke on example of this could be in jangles 1937 minor swing solo. The way I play that solo, my upstroke corresponds to the up beat of the song to recap two situations were and you might want to use the upstroke are If the down stroke is too slow for the what you're trying to play, you might want to start incorporating some up strokes or, if you want to use the upstroke to correspond to the up beat of the song again. Any time you want to switch strings, you have to do it down stroke. Here's what an upstroke is gonna look like. First, let's do a down stroke. Ah, wrist is loose. Now I'm gonna use my arm to pull my hand up so that my risk is loose and the pick is now grabbing the Lowy and then our pulls on the Lowy and releases it. And that's how you get the note. The pick pulls the string like that. Here's your down stroke. No. As I pull my arm up, my hand pulls the pick up like that on releases way. Remember to keep the wrist loose so that pick could get caught in the string. Remember, don't do an upstroke like this. Uh, that's alternate picking. We're not doing that here. Don't go like this. Um, from the wrist, you want your arm. Notice how my hand was wobbling like this. That means my wrist is loose. When you first learned how to do the up show, just practice each string separately, set the Metrodome really slowly and do a down stroke and then follow that with an upstroke . If you can competently play four up strokes on Ah, low even do it on the a, then same thing with the d. G. B Any again? We're not doing this. We're actually throwing our hands through the Lowy like this. Videotape yourself or use the mirror to make sure your wrist ihsaa loose. If it's wiggling, that's a good sign. If it's stiff, tone is going to be off. Uh, we want this. See, I'm just throwing my hand through the high way. When you get comfortable doing each string separately, you can start connecting the strength way. Theo, The goal of practicing this is to make sure that the upstroke has the same power and sound as the down stroke. You know you're doing this right If you're upstroke. Is Justus powerful? Is your down stroke? It sounds like this. That means you're not doing the right technique. You have to use your arm and throw your hand up through the string at the super slow tempos . You could do really big, loose motions, and as you speed up, it's going to get smaller and smaller. The way the basics of the upstroke and gypsy jazz 12. More on String Crossing: in this lesson. We're going to talk more about crossing the strings. We're gonna combine down strokes and up strokes to go from the Lowy to the High E and the high E back to the Lowy. In the first exercise, we're going to use an even number of notes per string. We're going to do to notes on the Lowy two notes on the A two notes in the D G. B e, and then the same thing going back down way in the second exercise, we're gonna use three notes per string. I'm going to go from low e toe high. In this exercise we're gonna do is a down stroke Thanet upstroke on, then another down stroke on there. We're gonna push through to the next string like this on. Then it upstroke on a down stroke pushed through your way. If you really want to get a strong sense for the triplet feel, you can set the Metrodome at a very low tempo and then count the triplets with your plane. With this exercise, I'm gonna teach you another main guideline for gypsy jazz picking in general when you go from ah, high string to a lower string. You want to make sure that the last stroke that you played on the higher string is upstroke ? I'm gonna play two notes on the high E and end on an up stroke, and then I'm gonna use that upstroke to go into the B string with the downstream like this . The upstroke from the high E led us right into that dance trip for the B. Let's add 1/3 note to the high E If you notice I had to do an extra upstroke for that B string on here, I have to do that extra upstroke and then the down stroke. One way to do this more efficiently is to actually do to down strokes on the high E and then an upstroke because that upstroke is gonna lead us into the B string. So instead of going down, up, down, we're gonna play down, down, up, and then boom into the B string like this. That third note, the upstroke after the two down strokes on the high e became the lead in for the down stroke on the B string. We're gonna play three notes on all the strings going down. So 123 notes on the high E B G D a and e And we're gonna do down, down, up, down, down, up, down, down, up like this with the way it's important to remember that when you're actually playing at a super slow tempo like that you're gonna be doing down strokes most the time anyway, like this. So what we're gonna do is we're actually use the down down up thing When we have a slightly faster tempo As in the previous exercise when we go from low to high we're gonna go down, up, down, push way Get up to the B string We're gonna do down, up, down Push through high Then we're gonna hammer the high doing upstroke on Then hammer the B string On the way back we're gonna do down, down, up, down, down, up, Down, Down, Up like this The's exercises should help you get better moving through the strings 13. A Minor Inversions on Top Three Strings Part 1: There are many, many different ways toe. Think about soloing in music. Soloing typically means stepping out from the background in this case, the rhythm or the accompaniment to make a musical statement as the foreground, while this rhythm players playing theme soloist will probably play like some maybe like some single note stuff, think this kind of thing on top of the rhythmic background, a lot of the soloing and gypsy jazz coming out of the cords. So, for example, let's say having a minor six scored. Well, if you notice those top three notes, if you play them, you could play the court like this. Azaz altogether is one chord, but you could break it up into an arpeggio like this on, and then you start to get into more single note. Playing. A very basic approach to soloing is to learn how to outline the courts. Let's say we have a song that just hangs out in a minor six like this. I could break that court up into separate notes to make single note melodies. For this lesson, we're gonna focus mainly on the top three strings because that's where a lot of soloing happens so the rhythm might be hanging out and providing more of the Basie sound over here . But often you're in here. Soloists play stuff like more on the higher strings. So we have our three notes. That's one way to arrange them. We could also play it like this. Or maybe Maybe so. There's a bunch of different ways to arrange these three notes we're gonna take these three notes on. We're gonna invert them and change them into different shapes on the top three strings of the guitar. Here's an open string variation of those three notes. Ah, in this case, I took the highest note of this cord on. I put it down here on. Then I took this note. I put it over here. Then I took this note on I just made that the High e s. So it's like this. Oh, so now we have two different ways to play this a minor chord. We could play here the top three strings or down here. Since there's three notes involved, we have one more shape that we can play on. And then here's how I got this shape. I took this note on. I put it up here. I took this note on. I put it over here. I took this note on I put it over here, so I inverted things cord to make it look like this. Now we have an a minor chord. That's low one. That's kind of a little bit higher on. Then we gotten one that's even higher on. Then we can take this shape that we had down here on repeats over here. So now we actually have 234 and then we could go even higher, because we can just repeat that original court shape up. There are main shapes. Air this for a minor. For this exercise, we're just gonna take the a minor chord, and we're gonna just break it up like this way. Just want to get to know these shapes. Really well, for the first shape, we're gonna take two fingers, take the middle finger, put it here first finger over here on, then we're just play an open string high. I like that, uh, for this part, we're gonna just bar the entire cord like this. I play all three notes using one finger for this shape. We're going to take our middle finger and we're gonna put it here. Take the third finger, Put it here. Here. We're gonna take the next finger and then play right there. We've got these courtships. The first exercise we're gonna do is just to move back and forth between the different inversions of that cord. We really want to just get used to seeing that shape on the guitar neck. Oh, notice how I took the big space between each beat to move my left hand into position before I played. It's really important to make sure your left hand is ready to play the notes that it's gonna play as soon as possible before you even consider the right hand. If you want, you can take these chords all the way up the guitar neck. Like this thing on the pattern repeats. And then this is too high. We can't do that. So we just have these two extra ones for a minor. So this now we're going to take all of these chords and break them into single notes For this exercise, we're gonna arpeggio all of those chords. Arpeggios eating is taking a cord like this on breaking it into the notes that make it up. Ah, we're going to start from the lower position. Go to this position all the way as high as we can go and then come back down. First, we're going to go just back and forth between the shape. On this way, when you get comfortable going back and forth between those shapes, we can add this third ship way. What? You get comfortable with those three shapes, you can add the fourth for now, for the fourth shape. Rooney's her third finger. Play this note. Second fingers can play. This 1/3 is gonna play this one. So it's a shame shape that we did down here just appear and with different fingering way . See, I added that extra went up here, which is the same as this one is higher in this exercise. For the right hand, - we're gonna arpeggio 14. A Minor Inversions on Top Three Strings Part 2: Instead of letting the notes ring out like this, we're gonna try to play it in a way so that the notes to string out one at a time way. So here's how we're gonna play the lowest open position version of a minor like this on. Then we're gonna play the next Newt and kind of lift that middle finger up. So it's not holding down like this. It's like this. And then we're gonna lift this finger up a little bit. So So that, uh, no, that's on the B string doesn't get play. It's like this. When we get to this position, we're gonna take this finger. I'm gonna play where, instead of barring it, we're gonna curl our finger a little bit like that instead of playing like this. So we just play that first note like this, I think we're gonna roll the finger down like this, and and what's gonna happen is this string is now muted. But this string is actually playing and they're going to roll it again down to the so it's gonna look like this practice going back and forth between those two shapes way. What we do is we take going to use two fingers Like Jangle did gonna play this note. Then we're gonna As we come down and press this note, we're gonna either lift this finger up or just lift it up off the strings. What's not pressing the note anymore? So it mutes it a little like this thing. Take this first finger again and then bring it down to the high e to play this note. Look like this way. What? You get this shape way we're gonna move to this shape. There's a couple different ways to arpeggio this shape. I tend to use two fingers like Django did, but you don't have to. But if you do, one way to do it might be like this. You take your middle finger, play this note on and then you drag that down to this Newt s So it's like this on. Then you play. I mean, of course, you could use three fingers, but I'm a general fanatic. Soy I was used Teoh, uh, for this shape, we're going to use our middle finger to roll like this instead of our first finger like we did down here. We're gonna go notice how When I was playing, I waited to the last possible moment to move my finger instead of going. The reason I'm doing that is I'm actually practicing what it would be like to play really fast at this. But I'm doing it at this super slow tempo. So it's the transitions, then make it fast the way you're playing it very fast. Tempos. You have to play those transitions very quickly. So get in the habit of practicing by waiting to the last possible moment before you have to move. Especially if the notes are gonna hold are gonna be held out like that in this exercise, we're gonna be going from low strings, toe high strings and arpeggio hitting the A minor chord. It's gonna look like this if you're first starting out. This may seem very complicated, so you gotta take it really slowly for the right hand. In this exercise, it's gonna look like this when a hammer the G push through the be pushed through the upstroke on the that leads us into a down stroke on the B down stroke on the G on the upstroke on the G on, then a down stroke on the B Thanet down, pushed through on the up shirt on the down, stroke in the B, then down stroke on the G Theun upstroke on the G etcetera way. When you get good at that, then you can add the left hand. We're gonna rip edgy. Ate the open string position to this position like this. Now we're gonna bar this A over here, E, we're gonna roll from high to low like this. We don't want the notes to ring out right out. We want to just get them really clean. We're gonna make a little circuit over here. Once you get good at those, you can add this shape. Eso we do. This one was now upstroke here. First finger here, middle finger here on, then fresh from her here on. Then we're gonna go back down to this one. So I'm grabbing here, roll a with one finger. If you can get good at that, then you could start adding this one and this one. So when we add this one over here, it's gonna look like this. Now we're gonna go up here with our first finger on I Since I used two fingers, I pushed to this. You could do this if you want. With third figure Teoh, you can practice this by just isolating these two positions like this. If you're having trouble with that, or you can just do the whole thing like this thing way you make a loops. The loop started over here and then it got bigger, and then it started getting bigger, and we're gonna go all the way up. And any time you're having trouble going from, let's say this one to this one or this one or this one, you can just leave make you can just loop that area, and we're gonna go all the way up and all the way down on create this big circuit. If you mess up, start again. Way, Theo. Another good exercises just to play the courts all the way. All of these exercises are gonna help you learn what it's like to play a minor arpeggio on the top three strings 15. E Major Inversions on Top Three Strings: another really important Corden. Gypsy Jazz is the major chord. Remember that E seven chord from minor swing. We're gonna take this cord and we're gonna break it up into its major aspect on Ben. We're gonna arpeggio eat those on the higher strings. If you take these three notes on you, play them on the higher strings. You get this to play this e major chord, take your first finger and bar the top three strings on the fourth. Fret like this and then take your second finger and place that on the fifth fret on the B string like this. Since there's three notes, there's gonna be three different versions of this cord. The lowest version of this court is down here. It's pretty easy to play. You just take your first finger and put it over here on the first fret of the G string and then play the open strings. After that like this, the third shape that the major takes looks like this to play this chord. You want to take your second finger and aim in between the G and the B strings on the ninth , Fret right here like this and go at an angle so that your besides your fingers congrats the streams more easily, and then you take your first finger and place it over here on the seventh fret of the high eat like this thes There are three inversions and then we can repeat this low one over here on the 12th. Fret Ah, To play this chord, all you have to do is take your second finger and put it on 13th friend of the G string like here, and then take your first finger and bar the B and E strings in the 12th Fret. This shape over here also meets up here as well. It's a little more difficult to play. So instead of just playing like this, I'm actually using the side of my finger right here to play it with two fingers. I'm turning my hand over a little bit and then I'm playing like this in this exercise, we're going to get to know these major shapes by playing them up the neck and then down the neck way. Continue looping from low to high until you get very comfortable with those shapes. Now we're gonna arpeggio eight thes shapes for the lowest one. Just play this for this one instead of barring the fourth fret. What we're gonna do is when I just play our first finger here on the fourth fret of the G string and then we're gonna play this hammer on and then they second finger on the fifth fret of the B string on. And then first finger on the high E on the fourth fret like that. So instead of doing this over here, we're gonna do something very similar to what we did when we just played the cord. Instead of grabbing in between both of these strings, we're gonna play just the G string. First on, we're gonna roll our finger down to the B on, then play the in this position. We're gonna take our second finger, play the G string at the 13th threat on that, we're gonna play the B string at the 12th fret with our first finger on, then roll it down to the high for this really high position Over here, we're gonna do the same thing that we did down here. Just up here. Now we're gonna loop from low to high and back. We're gonna hammer on this string push through on the be pushed through the way Try to lock in with the Metrodome And as it starts to feel more easy And as you start to get more comfortable with the chord shapes in the arpeggios, you could start to speed the Metrodome up a little bit for the last exercise. In this lesson, we're gonna loop from low strings, toe high strings as well as from the bottom of the neck to the top of the neck. So we're gonna go back and forth like this. It's going to sound like this. We're gonna use the same picking pattern that we used in the a minor arpeggio ation lecture . Here's what that picking pattern sounds like on the open strings. You're gonna hammer the G upstroke on the hammer a member of the jury on then upstroke on the G. Here's how we're gonna play it an open position like this. I think we're gonna take your first finger, go down to the fourth fret of high doing upstroke there on. Then put your second finger down on the fifth fret of the B string on and then first finger down on the fourth fret of the G on. Then we're gonna move that up here. We're gonna take our second finger and do upstroke over here. Then roll it down, push through, pushed. Move the first finger up here upstroke on this roll and then second finger on the 13th fret of the G on. Then we're gonna take our first finger over here, and we're gonna do an upstroke and then push her hammer on, then push. Then we'll go back to the 12th. Fret, Theun, back down here! A stroke over here! Theun upstroke! Over here! When you're first learning practice with very slow tempo, those exercises will help you get to know the major arpeggio on the top three strings. 16. D Minor Inversions on Top Three Strings: Now we're gonna take this d minor chord from minor swing and arpeggio it that on the top three strings the cool part about this is that we already know the shapes because we use them for a minor. We're just going to use them now for D minor like we did with a minor. We're gonna take the top three notes of this court on. We're gonna play him over here like this with our first finger barn. Oh. Then we're gonna rearrange those three notes and play them over here like this. You play that by taking your third finger, put on the seventh fret of the G string second finger on six fret of the B string and first finger on the fifth fret of the Eastern on our lowest D minor shape. Looks like this. Play this by taking it first finger. Put on the first fret of the high e, take your third finger, put it on the third fret of the B string, and that second finger goes in the second fret of the G string way. Okay, so we have these three shapes for D minor on. We can repeat this shape up here like this and maybe even play this. If you can reach now, we're gonna go from as low as possible in the neck to as high as possible in the neck and back and forth with those chords. Try to lock in with the Metrodome as much as possible and notice. When I went up really high, I brought my hand all the way around the guitar. Try to play that like this. I went like that. Okay, this is a really hardcore to put, but it's not so hard if you adjust your hand to get there. You know, you don't want to be trying to reach with your fingers like this. Make it easy for your fingers. That's the job of the hand is to make it easy for the fingers to do what they need to do. Now we're gonna arpeggio eat those chords for the lowest one. Take your first finger, put it on the G on the second fret second finger on the be on the third front and then first finger on the high e first fret t get this on. Then we're gonna do this over here. Same just like what we do with the A minor drag us down on then this one. Do that role appear? We just repeat what we did down here on then. Up here, Theo. With this shape, you can use either three fingers or you could do two fingers by dragging the first finger or drag the second winner, which everyone is easier for you after you've become familiar with her pet jiating d minor Using down strokes, we're gonna play like this thing for practice. You can just loop that back and forth now you know how to arpeggio d minor? 17. Connecting Positions on Top Three Strings: Now we're gonna see what happens when we start to mix these different arpeggios together. We're going to use the cords from minor swing as our guide. Let's start at the bottom of the neck. So the first chord from minor swing this a minor. So we're gonna play this, give it two hits for now, just to represent two measures that a minor takes up in the song there. Then we're gonna do d minor like this on. Then we're gonna do e, uh, to stand in for the e seven, the dominant chord there. And then we'll do a minor thing D minor seven way . The purpose of these exercises is to get you familiar with what it's like to switch back and forth between these different inversions of the different chords and to kind of picture in your mind what the shapes look like when they're interacting with each other. So we did it low. Now we're gonna do it over here in the middle like this, this one a minor d minor thing e on a minor d minor. - Do you feel comfortable playing it over here and here were in Play it over here first court is gonna be a minor d minor thing, E thing. A minor thing D minor thing. A minor way. Go even higher. I'm going to take what we did down here and bring it all the way up here. So it's gonna be a minor like this. Three D minor e a minor D minor. A minor. He now we're gonna pick two positions. It could be this one and this one or this one. And this one or this one. And this one on, we're gonna loop back and forth between them. You gonna take that concept and do it over here as well Like this. We're also gonna play it up here. Now we're gonna link three positions together. - You really have to think about the next chord when you're playing. This so follows Playing this. I was thinking about what? This is coming up next, right? So get into position, get into position and then play like that, - uh , for the last exercise window from the bottom of the neck. As far up as your guitar will allow and back, I'm going to make a loop like that. We're gonna play eight strums per record for example, with a minor. We're gonna go like this. 56 on. Then we're going to switch over to D minor E i e. We're gonna go over here. We're not gonna go all the way back down. We're gonna just pick up right where we left off. 67 A in a moderate we're gonna do over here. Okay, let's try it. - Thing is a really focus builder, you really have to focus on the cords and think you know what's coming up next. It might help to even say the names of the cords in your mind while you're doing it. You know, like, Oh, you can't hear it. But I'm like a minor. A minor. A minor d minor time during these exercises will help you learn the entire span of the neck on the top three strings. 18. Final Lesson: Arpeggiating Minor Swing: in this lesson. We're gonna take those cords from minor swing on the top three strings. We're gonna arpeggio eighth. Um, I'm going to go through the different positions for the first exercise. We're gonna loop the open string position with the second lowest position and go back and forth thing. Theo, Theo, on your own. I want you to take the concept of looping two positions and practice it not just here, but over here. And over here, I'll play a little bit of this loop just so you can get an idea. I just took the same idea of the loop and I did it over here, and I used the appropriate shapes. If you want to give yourself an even greater challenge, you can loop positions that are much further away from each other. It would look like this. Now we're gonna loop three positions. We're gonna do the open strings, the next lowest position and this position over here. Theo, we just did that with these three positions. But you can also do that with these three positions and possibly this position, this position and this position, if your guitar neck goes up that thing I think the idea for the last exercise of this lesson, we're gonna loop the entire neck. We're gonna go through all the positions back and forth. Theo. - Theo , We started the loop from the lowest position, but you could also start anywhere on the neck. Just got to make sure that you go up and down and just keep that loop going. For example, you could start in this position thing, themed. So the point is, is that you get really familiar with going through all the different positions, no matter where you're starting or where you're going. Arpeggio eating all of these different chords in all of these different positions with all of these different loops is going to really help you to get a good foundation in what it feels like to play a single note melodies over the cords. I hope you've enjoyed this introduction to Gypsy jazz. We've covered all the main rhythms in this style, and we started to build the foundation for soloing. Even though we spend most of the time working on one song with regards to Solo and you could take those concepts and exercises and apply them toe any song for example, we can apply the loop or Peggy Ation exercise to a song like all of me. Theo. Doing that kind of thing will help you to really get to know the cords of a saw. If you get really good at these basics and use these exercises, it's gonna make it so much easier to do. The more advanced stuff, this course is just the foundation. So be on the lookout for the next course, stay inspired and keep on practicing.