What Is Authentic Gypsy Jazz Rhythm? La Pompe Manouche 

Hi friends! This is part 1 of a 2 part series! The second part will be released next week! Please leave a comment, like, sub, and all that! I want to add that if you listen to Django’s recordings throughout his career, he and his rhythm players changed sounds over the years. I’m guessing that sound did matter to them!

18:11 Oh yeaaah, that's the stuff!

Just what I was thinking about. 🤔😅

Fun fact: the guitarist playing with Denis is a Stompin' Tom scholar! Ask him at any gig to play a Stompin' Tom tune and watch him light up!

So greatfull for your content!

thanks for this great video Dennis 🎼

Another amazing video Denis thank u 🙏

Great vid, Denis, and sick playing Zak! Hot damn!

I’ll be getting several end of the year vids ! Jonathan Stout and couple others

Thank you❤

That was killin !

Thanks again, Denis. Great video. Love how you share your experiences with top tier players.

Thank you Denis ! I thought I was going crazy with the “right or wrong “ way! One guy does it one way etc… I go with the guys who comp for the greats.

Thanks

Hi Denis-san, thanks for sharing your knowledge. I am a friend of Yumi and I am a bassist with not much experience in gypsy jazz. I would love to know your thoughts on groove, time feel and the relationship between bass and rhythm guitar as well. Looking forward to your next video.

I had the experience of being called out by some of my band members, critiquing my rhythm playing. I, too, I am a soloist who is trying to perfect his rhythm. I didn’t like hearing it at first, but I took your advice and went back and studied a lot of your offerings here as well as a few others. I’m doing my best to make the band happy and have been succeeding mostly more than not. I do, however, sometimes find it overwhelming, especially at the level at which you dissect the possibility of what may be required by different players. At least I am in a quartet that practices weekly and gigs a few times a month. I guess what I’m looking for is some sort of way to consistently play what will be acceptable and pleasant and supportive for my soloist (when I’m not soloing), still be attentive to the best thing to play when required, adding the occasional accent that would be helpful, and still paying attention to good dynamics. In any case, I very much appreciate your extremely detailed explanations, which encourages me to be the very best player I can be.

Thanks for the video Denis. Appreciate it. You mentioned you worked hard to have a good sense of time in rhythm. Do you mind sharing on the ways you did that? 😊 Thanks!

Hey Denis, how are you working on improving your ability to keep the tempo ? Should I always exercise with the metronome ? Thanks

I feel like progressing as a soloist is much more easily quantifiable and many free internet resources are more geared towards that. I’d be interested if you could expound on what you mean by “working hard” at getting good at rhythm accompaniment, especially in terms of a daily practice routine when there isn’t a soloist around. Playing rhythm along with You Tube rhythm tracks doesn’t seem ideal. Thanks for all you do for the genre, looking forward to the DC sale!

Hi Denis thanks for the video, really trying to work on my rhythm playing and this helped a lot. In terms of the solo at the beginning you said that it’s an original solo but isn’t it practically note for note of the Hungary solo by Pansch Weiss with Favino?

Hi Denis, I've been to one of your workshops and appreciate your knowledge and experience. You're obviously not a "one-trick pony" when it comes to rhythm playing, as demonstrated by the way you are able to get gigs with the best soloists and adapt to what these soloist is looking for. However, one thing that stood out to me in this video is this: When you are demonstrating what you want to share through your experience in gypsy jazz rhythm playing, you are using all downstrokes. Slowing down the speed to 0.5, I can easily see and hear a gentle sweep on the 1 and 3 and a more abbreviated, slightly muted stroke on the 2 and 4. No upstrokes. When you're playing with any of the top-tier players, do any of them ever call for that style of rhythm as a baseline? I always figured they're looking for the upstroke on 1 and 3 as the starting point. I'd greatly appreciate your reply.

This is such common sense stuff, that it's embarrassing someone would ask the questions, or make the comments "it's my way......". Pretty much in every genre each artist has particular nuances and sound. Anyways good points, thanks for making them.

Thanks for sharing your insights, Denis! May I ask which microphone you are using here?

Triggered!🤪

For pompe players, light but with authority. No cha-chans except when a new cycle is coming. The rest has to do with gesture communication while playing, which seems like an art in itself to me. I spot more and more small gestures that musicians make for different things, I assume there are some rules in a jam for that, Denis, do you know about those? How do you prevent in a jam of 4 from throwing ornaments constantly? In a concert setup is more organized: When I see Bireli during a violin solo he throws more fun things, and he also throws some others in general, but he really tries to be in the back when he does them. And you see the designated pompe players never throw an extra cha-chan. In a free jam, I guess the rule is "not to overdo but you can still have fun"? Good swinging flowing pompe is haaaaaaaaard to have it right as a beginner because it really has a lot of nuances you don't know yet. it took me 2 years of daily practice to really have it going decently. The first months were "WAM CHAKA WAM" and was really hard to make it swing.

P.S. Gonzalos rhythm is the worse LOL.. so bottom heavy that chords are barely distinguishable.

How many noobs learned their rhythm from Sven and Gonzalo