I made myself a neat little exercise for tracing the C major scale, using leading tones, and I use it sometimes to get ideas for soloing over songs in Am and C major. Learn and memorize this entire run.

—————2-3———————
———–0-1—–4-5—————–
———0————-4-5————-
—–1-2——————-4-5———
-2-3—————————6-7—–
———————————–7-8-
——————————————11-12-
————————————12-13——-
——————————13-14————-
————————13-14——————-
-9-10——-11-12-14-15————————-
——11-12————————————-
-6-7——————-
—–7-8—————
———8-9———–
————-9-10——
——————9-10-
———————–
After doing this, try tracing the Am arpeggio and note the slight differences. I got this idea from learning the Patrick Sassois head to Djangos Tiger and also from Appel Direct, which I still am unable to play. I personally find Appel Direct even harder than the head to Rhythm Futur.

Most of the really useful gypsy jazz learning material that I have absorbed are things that I do not post to my site out of respect for whomever shared the information with me. If someone teaches me something important, or if I pay for a lesson and I learn something, I try not to disrespect their trust and I always refrain from posting anything about it on my site.
I also try not to post anything to my site that I don’t discover for myself on my own. I try my hardest to be original in my ideas although some of my thoughts are derived from other things I have learned or gleamed from books.
As a result I probably do not appear to be well rounded in my learning experience. As one of my readers, you all should realize this and remember that you need to be proactive about “filling in the gaps” of subject mater that I do not mention. Also, you shouldn’t take my site or my opinions too seriously, because its just a casual thing for me that I spend very little time on.

I found a good song to practice your gypsy chords with. Here is my arrangement of Seule ce Soir in G. I specifically chose chord voicings for the GM6/9 and the F#7+9 to help you start thinking about using “fuller” chords.
\\ GM \ G \ F#7 \ F#7 \ G \ G \ E7 \ E7 \
\ Am \ D7 \ G \ E7 \ F#7 \ F#7 \ Am \ D7 \\
\\ G \ G \ F#7 \ F#7 \ G \ G \ E7 \ E7 \
\ Am \ Cm6 \ Bm \ E7 \ Am \ D7 \ G Ddim \ Am D9 \\
\\ GM6/9 \ GM6/9 \ F#7+9 \ F#7+9 \ GM6/9 \ GM6/9 \ E7 \ E9 \
\ Am \ D7 \ GM6/9 \ E7 \ F#7+9 \ F#7+9 \ Am \ D7 \\
\\ GM6/9 \ GM6/9 \ F#7+9 \ F#7+9 \ GM6/9 \ GM6/9 \ E7 \ E9 \
\ Am \ Cm6 \ Bm7 \ E7 \ Am \ D7 \ G Ddim \ Am D9 \\
The voicings that I use are below, you should interpolate the rest. Notice how easy it is to finger a C#m6 in the same position as the F#7+9 chord? Notice how the E9 can also be fingered easily in the position where the Bm6 is fingered? That is 2 dominant chords that have close m6 relation. Those nearly work as substitutions?
GM6/9 . F#7+9 . E7/E9
–5—-4—-7–
–5—-5—-7–
–4—-3—-7–
–5—-4—-6–
–5—-4—-7–
–3———7–

I tracked down a local guitar repair person who had worked on 2 or 3 other Favinos in the Portland area and had him to some work on my Favino 12 fret D-hole.

Initially I took the guitar in and asked if he could fix a crack caused by the low humidity in the month of November and December. Everyone out there should be careful in those months and buy a humidifier and a humidity guage and monitor your instruments if you really care about them. I learned the hard way but it turned out good for me. Now that January has arrived the humidity in my house has come back up to a normal 55% and so its not so much of a problem now. My 83 Favino #902 is now good as new.
Speaking of the effects of humidity, even my Shelley Park guitar was showing neck distortion once the humidity got down to 35% and once I brought the humidity in my case back to 45% the neck returned to its normal straight as an arrow shape. I have to admit, that really scared me and I am happy it righted itself out.
I got my Favino back after “Portland Fretworks” did some work on it. He fixed the crack that appeared in the seam of the top, straight down the middle of the top from the hole to the tailpiece. I guess is a very common place for a crack to appear. He made a paper thin spruce splice, cleaned out the crack and put the splice in the crack and connected it all back together. The reason for the “splice” is because the wood evidently doesn’t expand back to its original shape. A certain percentage of shrinkage is permanent and so be careful with your guitars! Underneath the top I now also have 4 very small spruce “cleats”. Each one is no bigger than a US dime.
I was going to wait a few years to replace the frets but the repairman pointed out that the frets on the guitar were already not original and so I let him go ahead and replace the frets. The first 5 frets were worn down bad enough that I think he would have had to carve all the frets all the way down the fingerboard. Replacing the frets was probably much easier and it turns out that my guitar now plays much better.
I avoided installing a BigTone since putting a hole in this guitar would break my heart and I am hoping to use a Schertler instead, which I might buy in a few days. Besides, the existing “full contact” bridge on this Favino is very cool and I am not about to change it.
The repairman pointed out that the chrome tailpiece on my guitar was not original. There are 4 old covered up screw holes on the tail end of my Favino which suggested some non-selmer style tailpiece was on there at one time. This was very dis-heartening to discover this nearly invisible alteration but the guitar plays and looks perfect and so its no big deal.

Thinking about diminished chords lately and how to use them while playing over a tune. Take these 3 inversions of the C diminished chord. One is the middle 4 strings, the next has a root on the 6th and the last has its root on the 4th string.
As we all know each one of these three chords also has its own inversions which can also be played in 3 fret intervals which makes 4 inversions each. In other words we have a diminished chord with three standard inversion shapes which have 4 different inversions each. That is a total of 12 inversions for this particular diminished chord. I think we all should be able to visualize these completely and play them up and down the fingerboard.
————–11–
–4—–7—–10–
–2—–8—–11–
–4—–7—–10–
–3—————
——–8———
Every one of these chords contains a tri-tone which also exists in other chord shapes such as the Robin Nolan style D7 or the Am6 chords. This suggests that over a Am6 or D7 you could use a corresponding diminished scale.
Also of major importance is the fact that the Bbdim triad at the 6th position, that we all know and love from the Robin Nolan books, can be substituted for the Gm6 triad at the 3rd position. Think about that one for a while.

For recording on your computer I would suggest buying the Adobe Audition product on EBay for around $30. It is probably much easier to use than Cakewalk and less frustrating for a beginner.
I am playing with the idea of buying a Fostex digital 8-track on EBay for around $225. It has a USB connection to the computer so that after you record you can save to the computer and edit with a simple wav editor like the one that comes with Nero CD burning software.
Since my intention is actually only to make rhythm tracks to just play over and then have the ability to play them back to hear what I sound like, I am also thinking of another option. It is the iRiver wav/mp3 recorder ( http://www.iriveramerica.com/products/iHP-120.asp ). Combined with a cheap “powered mic” it seems that it would be fine for me since I don’t need to do anything in stereo. With the iRiver device I could record an entire all-night jam in very high quality in one sitting and then take it home for editing. A standard MiniDisc recorder records at 48Kbps and this thing can do up to 384Kbps.

I played what might be considered my first gig last night at a little bar on the east side. I wasn’t very happy with my rhythm playing, but its also the first time I have ever really been put on the spot like that. Four hours of playing, $14 of earnings, a halfway bleeding ring finger, and a not so impressed patron is a good gig right? Considering that I only have half my set list memorized, I think I did ok, but I think the patron of the bar has dealt with gypsy jazzers before and so the music wasn’t anything special to him.
We played about 35 tunes over a 4 hour period and played a few twice. I did discover that I definitely need to spend more time woodshedding with the metronome.