I need a great soloing workout plan

Jim Kaznosky

Anthony - Someone is selling Denis Chang Volume 1 in the classified section here:
viewtopic.php?f=10&p=49959#p49940

This DVD got me going on a good path and there are many instantly usable licks revolving around arpeggios you are probably already familiar with.

With regards to Tchavolo, I think Jon's suggestion is a good one to transcribe Tchavolo's solos to figure out some vocabulary. I find his lines to be easier to place harmonically at this stage in my learning. "Alors?...Voila" is a well regarded recording of his and it has a lot of original tunes (written by Romane). I'm kind of partial to "Loutcha."

Jon

Yeah, I think Alors...voila! is the best. Such a great album! Beautiful tunes, great guitar playing, and accordion too. I love them all though. Seven Gypsy Nights is brilliant too.

Not sure about how much of Django's playing "doesn't make sense". Most of it is pretty harmonically simple, or else a "trick" that has it's own internal consistency, and isn't meant to really fit 100% with the underlying chords. The Bm arp over A69 is most likely (not having it to hand right now) a part of a superimposed 2-5-1 (the Bm being the 2 chord in that key), or, as in this style people often play the 2 minor arpeggio over the 5 chord, just a simple 5-1. This is a pretty common thing to do if you've lots of bars of just one chord sitting ahead. It creates some more tension and release.

Jon

Jon

If anyone wants a good fretboard knowledge workout too - as opposed to a technique/immediate gratification thing, try this (it's probably overkill for gypsy jazz, and pretty academic, but it's fun...sort of, and will sort some things out):

Write out every reasonably useful arpeggio on a piece of paper in every key: lets say for instance Maj,Min triads, Dim7, Dom7, Aug, Half Dim to start with.

There should be over 100 chords on the page (Amaj,Amin,Adim etc...Bbmaj, Bbmin, Bbdim etc...)

Now on another page, write them out in random order, so that all the A's, or all the Aug's aren't grouped together, but also so that no predictable pattern is formed.

Now, start in 1st position on the guitar with the metronome on 40. For this exercise, 1st position means you are allowed to dip down one fret to get a note (ie in first position, you can play open strings), but can't go higher than 4 frets above. So, in first position here, you can only play notes between frets 0-4...2nd position will be 1-5 etc etc. You now have 2 octaves and a 3rd at your disposal.

You start on the root of the first chord, and play 4 notes from that chord ascending.
When you finish those 4, keep ascending, going to the closest available note in the next chord, and ascending until you run out of notes in that position - then start descending, but always going to the closest available note in whatever chord you're on, and never allowing yourself to change direction unless you've reached the top of bottom of your current position. Also never reset to the root of the chord - note choice is out of your hands here.

For example, if your chart starts Cmaj, Ebdim, Gmin, Aaug, your line will start: [C,E,G,C],[Eb,F#,(now because the next note in Ebdim is A, which is on the 5th fret of the E string (not allowed), we have to reverse direction and go down back to Eb instead), Eb, C], [Bb, G, D, Bb], [A, F, (here we have to change direction again), A, C#] .....etc

So, four beats/notes per chord and somewhere over 100 chords later, you've finished 1st position. Now do 2nd. You can now only use notes on frets 1-5 (open strings and frets 6+ are not allowed).

You can go like this all the way up. It takes ages, but it'll really sort out your arpeggio knowledge. Not to be tried unless you can already play 5 or 6 two octave shapes for each arpeggio covering the whole neck.

Start at a different point in the chord progression each time you try this to avoid learning it by repetition.

If you want to make it harder, include arpeggios with b9s, #4s etc, or include enharmonic spellings for notes - ie Cb, A#, E# etc

Jon

redblues

Nice advice Jon, think I might take it myself, approach and discipline, greater goal in mind

anthon_74

Okay Jon, now that's what I'm talking about ! Hey, if you've already done this exercise, can you photo copy the 2 arpeggio pages and put them in PDF ??
Sorry to be pushy . It sounds like a great exercise but I know I'll have problems putting together the written stuff.
That's the kind of thing I was looking for. The scale mode system I use helped me learn the guitar neck from a major scale POV quickly by playing all seven modes in every key going down the circle of 5ths. I was hoping for some sort of equivalent in terms seeing the guitar broken into chord shapes instead of scale patterns.
My issue is getting lost in the song. It seems like I can't always keep track of the chord changes AND let myself get caught up into the solo.
I think if I know the neck from the chordal POV really well that would help me.

cheers!

Jon

Last time I did that exercise was a long time ago at uni, so unfortunately I don't have the sheets to photocopy. Shouldn't take more than an hour or so to do though. Still, before you try this, you should work out 5 or 6 workable patterns for every arpeggio to cover the fretboard. These can be based on your scale patterns - just leave out the notes you don't want ie If you have a pattern for a major scale, you also have one for the triad arpeggio, just play only the 1,3 and 5 of the scale.

Another thIng to try if the issue is getting lost, is to try just playing the melody, then using it as an anchor - venturing outside it for a few bars to improvise something, then returning to it to make sure you've kept your place. To really get freedom within the form though, and stop losing your place, there's no real one method, just heaps and heaps of trying to do it.

wim

Jon wrote:

My 2 cents:

(in addition to, or as a focus for learning arpeggios)

1. Pick a solo - probably Django is a good place to start and end, although Tchavolo is good too, because he plays simple ideas, but really, really well, and with amazing time.
2. Learn the solo (100% speed, and being very picky about technique and timing
3. Figure out how everything in it fits against the chords theoretically (chord degrees etc)
4. Could you have thought of all the phrases - ie do you have an arpeggio pattern to account for each phrase?
5. If not, practice patterns for the ones you don't
6. Work out whether some licks could work over different types of chords (ie often minor lines work also over the relative major, or over the dominant 7th a fourth above...major lines that don't use the 7th often work verbatim over dom 7th chords)
6.5 Some licks work well starting a beat or a half beat earlier or later. Try playing the lick starting on all of these beats - 1,1+,2,2+,3,3+,4,4+
7. Take one short phrase at a time from the solo and improvise over a new tune playing only that phrase - finding a way to make it work over every chord, or just leaving space if you can't.
8. Are there any "tricks" or technical gimmicks in the solo (chromatic runs, DUD picking licks )etc? If so, learn them exactly and go back to 7 to practice them.
9. Learn some hard Waltzes to get you technique working.

Hope that helps. That's basically my practice regime.

Jon

This is great.. especially #3 helps me so much to remember lines and melodies. If I don't do #3 then I just forget them in a few weeks, but if I did it then I can remember them seemingly indefinitely.

anthon_74

Hey there people !!!
I'm excited to say that I had a massive break through today on my aforementioned soloing plan. I've been stuck for months, but I had a whim, followed it and Oila' !

So here it is, and I recommend it to anyone who has trouble following the chord changes and tends to get lost.
It's basically a variation on the standard practice technique of playing the basic arpeggios over a given song to get accustomed to the changes. Kind of like what Stephen Wremble's book has you do.
BUT HERE'S the caveat ---- you pick a song, say 'all of me' and you play the basic arpeggios, BUT FIRST with only using the[u] 'E' chord shape Arpeggios [/u](minor major seventh whatever).
SECOND you do the same thing, but only using the [u]A chord shape arpeggios[/u].
THIRD you do the same thing but ONLY using the [u]D chord shape arpeggios[/u].

Perhaps this was obvious to you all but It just didn't occur to me. I was trying to use different chord shape arpeggios from change to change during a single practice, and I was getting nowhere in memorizing where all the chords were in a real time situation. This way I'm familiarizing myself with the songs changes one chord SHAPE at a time.

Cheers !
Anthony

Jim Kaznosky

This is something I don't do enough, as I spend most of my time transcribing licks. That sounds like a good plan. I'd suggest adding a 4th pass where you run arps in position and a 5th pass where you run horizontal arps. But yes, that looks like a great way to get your arpeggios down.

anthon_74

So I found the workout plan !!!

It's in Daniel Gilvone's method book. He writes out note maps/scales around the chord shapes. This is what I'm talking about. Also all the licks are presented along with the chord shape they go around, placed in 5 different forms. It's very easy to transpose the licks, which makes it easier and quicker to learn.

I recommend this book big time, if you want to understand how a gypsy jazzer sees the guitar, and how to get it "into your fingers". Only problem is it's in french.

Some good stuff here.

Anthony