I just saw an old Django clip where he's starting on upstrokes!!! But...being the Master, I spoze he can brake any rule he wants! Great video dude, and thanx for the insight a few months ago about the guitars themselves!
You’re an amazing player and your mastery of the guitar is phenomenal, the way you tie theory into your lessons, and your attention to technique. I studied classical guitar in uni for four years, so I really appreciate the use of terms like rest stroke and free stroke, and the way you explain it from a musician’s perspectve as well as a guitarist’s perspective. Thank you for another great lesson!
Lo fi production, bad audio, no professional set or editing, but still hands down one of the best gypsy jazz tutorials on youtube. Great technique analysis. Thanks!
This was sick. My instructor also came from a fusion background so laying out all these technicalities definitely helped me understand this style big time! Thank you!!
Great go-to for GJ picking technique. I've been looking more into it and researching how it relates to my primary way of picking, and you deliver on the common questions. Probably helps that you came into this later on because a lot of GJ players play from tradition without maybe the outside perspective to explain it to a "regular player".
This is amazing. So well explained! I was always gutted because this is my natural arm/wrist angle and didn't look like any other (electric) guitarist who was well known for fast runs at the time I was trying to get good at guitar in the late 80s/90s. It's a great alignment for syncopated/funky rhythm playing, but then I felt I had to totally straighten up and change thumb/finger/pick arrangement if I was to ever get any speed/economy up for soloing, and then rejig it all back for the rhythm again. Very marked changes in positions! Hence I just slowly lost interest cos it never worked. Now, MANY years later, I see this! Time to dust the geet off and try again. Thank you, thank you!
Great video!I remember back in 2001 when i was very influenced by Jeff Beck's thumbtechnique trying to emulate it with a pick.I called it pushpicking :).Since then i have of course learnt About the reststoke and the gypsy jazz picking.Great picking technique for blues too.
I use Rest stroke technique. This is the first time I hear somebody relating Jimi Hendrix, Stevie Ray Vaughan and rest stroke picking. What a great explanation!!! Excellent.
Thanks for the lesson Marbinmusic. I am new to the Gypsy Jazz repetiore. The right hand technique help me learn more in how to play the type of lines Django play's.
Me too! I always thought it was him being a bit flamboyant and eccentric. None of his peers picked like that so it came across as some anomaly that he uniquely made work.
I might not can play "all of me" but at least I can appreciate this style now that I understand the technique better. Thanks (6 years late but this was really great)
Merci beaucoup pour ta vidéo Marbin, tu es un excellent prof et en plus, de musique Française, bravo!!! je joue depuis des année du jazz manouche et j'habit en new caledonia, si un jour tu passes par là, n'hésite pas a me recontacter...a+
Great video, very clearly explained. Do you find with this style that you naturally avoid descending single string arpeggios(one note per string)? Or can you develop the double downstroke(half reststroke) to a point where you have equal facility in arpeggios and three note per string lines, regardless of the direction?
I want to make this important for everyone reading this, this is an amazing video demonstrating this technique it`s a perfect way to start. However if you come from a Heavy Metal--i.e. heavy alternate picking--background as I did, it is very important that you practice both your alternate picking and rest strokes very heavily, as you will severely lose your ability to alternate pick lol. Maybe it was just me, but once I started practicing rest stroking heavily, it seems like my hand began defaulting to something like economy picking. When I started "re-learning" alternate picking it was very very difficult, surprisingly, the rest stroking remained intact ha! Practice Hard Everyone! RIP DR
This is video is fantastic. Clear and short :-) One question, I always had troubles with fast alternate picking in electric guitar, do you guys think Gypsy pickins is ease convertible for electric, I tried it for a few day and already feel a better weight on the picking and such.
Dani, my thumb is black from the strings when playing Le Pompe. I like the tone from pick and flesh combination, albeit its just on a regular acoustic. What I'd really like to know is that for rhythm playing is the pick still at the 45 degree as you showed in your rest strokes. Lockdown hopefully finds you safe and well.
Marbi thanks that was extremely useful. Just 2 Q's --- How about descending sweep picks moving from 1st to 6th string instead of one half-down-stroke per string? Is that ''illegal''? And what is your preferred default picking position relative hole and string length ------- Is there a position which lends itself better to executing the rest stroke rapidly? edit: ps.. one more wee interrogation, just in case you were enjoying your siesta .. do you think that the picking arm curve being so difficult to achieve where the arm is long is something absolutely prerequisite to obtaining the right sound or is there room for variation?
I like the video very much, thank you. There is, however, one more thing I don't know. How do we play two notes for a string? Ascending it should be always down stroke, am I right? And what with another direction? :)
Great video! How fast can you play consecutive notes on one string with that technique and what do you do on the high e string since there is no higher string to rest on?
Hey Dani, a few questions (if you have a chance) did you transcribe Django parts when you were learning this stuff or was it just applying the right hand to what you already knew? Also, why the D hole guitar rather than the O hole? Love your playing!
Awesome video, really helpful! How fast would you be able to play 16th note runs with the half-rest stroke? At which point is it not humanly possible to do it anymore and you have to transpose the run to do more of an alternate picking/sweeping motion? Thanks!
Listen to some fast solo from Stochelo Rosenberg and similar, that should give you a pretty idea of how fast someone who devoted their life to that style can go. If you listen to his sound, you realize that even in extremely fast passages he keeps somewhat the dynamics of the style. When he does not, he does on purpose rather than for sake of speed I think. Anyway, in the moment you introduce clever dynamics in picking, you can sound much faster than the metronome might suggest. "speed" is a function of the ability of the listener to follow what you are doing. If you make that more complex or exciting, it will feel way faster to the people listening, compared to a flat 16th notes run with no dynamics changes. That's because the brain gets way more to process.
Thank you for such clean teaching. You are a great picker. One question: at @ 6:19 you start to burn and it looks like you flatten out the arch in your wrist and go to down-up picking. Am I wrong? I can see where rest strokes are great for big tone up to 16th notes but after that can you maintain pace? Whatever, you do great job of explaining a fairly difficult concept for old Rock & Rollers...
Hi, You strike me as the sort of chap who is pretty handy at the conventional flat wristed style of picking too.How do the speeds compare? Particularly descending lines and arpeggios. Can you get the same fluidity descending, with the half rest stroke as you can with sweeping backwards? trying to get into gypsy picking, but having difficulty with this aspect. Thanks in advance.
no you will never be able to do that. you have to learn a vocabulary of lines that work with the technique rather than try to play the same patterns and make the technique fit
Also how would you pick a run of triplets using two notes per string? I assume the first partial of a triplet is a downstroke, and that triplets are picked down up down? Works out fine if you are playing a triplet run using three notes per string. But what's the picking if the rhythm is triplets but you are playing two notes per string? A pentatonic in triplets for example? Thanks in advance.
Yes, and he didn't mention it but you can also use hammer-ons and pull offs in this style, they are actually used quite a lot since this technique has a speed limit if you want to pluck everything note individually
I keep comming back to this video because it is the best lesson on gipsy picking, but after 3 years I still keep so much tension in my wrist. It is verry frustrating
When you are not playing in the gypsy jazz style (particularly when playing electric guitar) do you adhere to the picking pattern demonstrated here? When sheer volume is not a priority, do you find it easier to use "economy" picking on descending lines? It it possible to use both techniques effectively, or is it best to adhere to only one picking pattern at all times?
I don't play this way strictly while playing electric but learning how to play like this was very useful technically for electric playing. but I would learn how to play both ways
Nice video, but I have a question regarding open strings muting. Usually I mute open low strings using my right hand. But When I hit A on a B string while playing lead using this gypsy picking technique, open A and D strings start to resonate. How to fix that?
Easy to ascend with sweeps. Hard to descend with half rest strokes. Seems like a life destined to fast ascending arpeggios and slow descending arpeggios. What am I missing?
Nick Knirk I don‘t think you are missing something. Just, after an insane amount of practice the descending arpeggios can be played quite fast as well. Watch the many videos of Stochelo Rosenberg with close up right hand camera. Some of the champs, like Joscho Stephan, would also change the direction of the pick and sweep upwards if they want to get super fast on an descending arpeggio. Btw, this is an excellent video!
Firstly, i appreciate you a lot because it is an advice what i ve found before. however as many people mentioned, i also wonder HOW to 'MUTE the OPEN STRINGS'. it is really important for me because i have to record a lot but there will be many problems to play melodies by this technique. if you see this comment, please give me your advice..! i wonder seriously..! and again thank you for sharing your advice.
@@danihrabin thanks...!! So you don't mute 4,5,6 open strings? If you have free time, please make a video how to practise the picking of this technique...!! I will wait for that! And again thank you! It is really helpful
You don't, with rest stroke technique your will get so much sound out of the high string that the sympathetic vibration of the low string will barely be audible (if that's what you're asking)
It looks to me like mastery of the half-rest stroke is the rate limiting part of playing fast with this technique. How do you do it? I desperately want to know.
@@marbinmusic Maybe so. Would you please first answer this question for me: If one can play fast lines with the half-rest stroke then why not use it exclusively and do away with ever alternating the picking motion? How do we set up a Skype lesson?
@@danielsheltraw8773 the whole point of this picking style is for the strokes to follow the phrases and color them a certain way. It’s way more of an articulation issue than a technical efficiency issue. You pick certain patterns a certain way to make them sound in the style of that makes sense.
How the hell you mute the last 3 strings? I mean, curving the right hand, it's impossible. Let's say, ascending you leave one string for another, and what if within this process accidentally and unexpected sound is produced, there is no way tu mute it! Btw, great video man!
This is a problem that I'm experiencing as well. I always wondered why Hendrix often had his thumb covering the top strings. I think this might explain it, since he's known to have curved his right hand in the same way. That said, it doesn't seem to be a problem for Dani, and he doesn't appear to be using his thumb to mute the strings, but he still achieves great tone without any apparent racket coming from the low strings. What gives, Dani? Could you please shed some light on the subject? Thanks!
I think it is not a problem but a asset. Sympathetic resonances creates a natural reverb on a guitar that's meant to be fast and loud, with little sustain. So,, resonances are part of the sound, and not too proeminent given the loudness that technique provides for the notes that are actually played. And well, if you have to mute something, you can always flatten your right wrist or use your left hand to eradicate the awful mistake. Or use your nose :-D
Sacco Belmonte thats right. also on acoustic guitars the other strings don't resonate that much like in electric guitars, and, with enough practice you shouldn't create any unexpected sound
