As you all may know, I attended the national bluegrass fiddle championship this last weekend and I must say that it was a lot of fun. I didn’t go to play old time fiddle tunes or bluegrass. I actually went to meet and play with all the jazz musicians that show up there every year. Among them were gypsy jazz musicians Larry Wyatt from Hood River, Oregon, Paul Anastasio from the early Pearl Django days and also Michael Valentiner from Minneapolis, Minnesota.
There were about 30 jazz guitarists between the ages of 30 and 60 at the event this year. I had a lot of fun jamming with some of these guys when they gave me a chance. Since most of them have been attending the fiddle contest for years they all have learned how to jam with each other in an almost magical way. They draw from a pool of around 200-400 jazz standards and every one of these guys can deduce the chords of a song merely by knowing the key and part of the melody. Its magical and its inspiring to me.
In watching this I think I have learned something very very important: Its not enough to just merely memorize songs, you also need to understand them from a jazz point of view and see and hear the patterns that occur in the songs that you play.
This is where I preach the importance of knowing and recognizing the ii – V – I and the ii – vi – V – I patterns, among others. I watched these guys use their knowledge of these patterns as a tool to adapt to ANY song. They were able to jump right in on the gypsy jazz tunes that I played and expand upon them greatly. It still leaves me in awe.

I got a chance to meet the Mosier, Oregon luthier Paul Lestock while I was at the national fiddle contest this year. He had a few guitars that he was selling and among them were two Selmer replicas.
The craftmanship was definitely as good as any other gypsy jazz luthier. I have played many guitars from various gypsy jazz luthiers such as Shelly Park, DuPont, Favino, Anastasio, and Dunn. The only issue I had with the two guitars that he had with him was that he used a narrower neck. Normally I look for something with 45mm nut width and 58mm neck width at the body join. For those of you who know, the Gibson L-5 had a 58mm neck at the body. Most other guitars, such as the two Paul had, have a 48-50 mm width.
He mentioned that he could make a wider neck if I wanted one. I definitely give his guitars a thumbs up if your looking to get into something American made. I doubt you would ever have to worry about neck problems, top problems, cracks, etc. He seems to really know his stuff. Paul doesn’t stick to making only Selmers. He seems to specialize in making guitars, mostly archtops, of various retro designs.

I think I finally have reached my goal of memorizing 30 songs and it only took me 70 days to do it. This weekend I leave for the National Fiddle Contest to meet some other players and I will put my memory to the test. I expect that it will take me a day or two to get comfortable, but I am halfway certain I will not need to refer to any sheet music unless I stray outside of my 30 song arsenal.
I am going to set my next memorization goal for Djangofest. I hope to have 45 songs memorized by then. If I memorize one more song per week, I should be able to reach that goal.

For the first time I have noticed solid evidence of a song using a modal scale in the melody. The head to Swing 42 uses a D-position C Dorian scale for the melody. I noticed this while attempting to experiment with modal scales during my soloing. This validates my theory that using modes in gypsy jazz is technically ok and it opens up a new tool for me to use.
For now, my intention is not to use any modes except for the Dorian mode and the minor mode in my soloing until I learn to play at least a few of my gypsy argeggios in Dorian mode as well. I think there is too much to learn for me to venture any further into this part of music theory for now. For now, I will continue to work on the 30 songs that I have now memorized and so memorization is the key for me right now.