Django Reinhardt technique

[torpedovegas]

Hi Guys,

So I have a guitar student who is 82 years old.  Sweet old guy who just wants to learn chords and melodies from 30s/40s jazz/country tunes.  He had a stroke some years back so the ring and pinky fingers on his left hand don't work as well as the other two.  Therefore, he generally has some trouble with the scale charts I gave him.

I got to thinking about Django Reinhardt, because he primarily used the index and middle fingers for his solo melodic lines.  Does anyone have any resources that might give some indication as to his technique and how he would structure scales to compensate for his hand limitation?  Most of the stuff I find online is people doing a 4 finger adaptation of his stuff...because, why not if you got 'em.  I'm not necessarily looking to teach him Django tunes but just to apply Django's technique to suit him.

 

[Verne Bunsen]

You can watch the man himself and still have no friggin' idea how he did it! This video is a personal favorite; not exactly "hi-def" but it's about as good a look at his fingers in action as you'll ever get. If it were a VHS, the bit at about 2:50 would be worn unwatchably thin due to my repeatedly rewinding it to watch over and over and over and over... I hope you can manage to help your student make some music  :icon_thumright:

[youtube]ANArGmr74u4[/youtube]

 

[BigSteve22]

....the ring and pinky fingers on his left hand don't work as well as the other two.  Therefore, he generally has some trouble with the scale charts I gave him.

I can relate to his problem. I sliced my left hand and ring finger open on a piece of glass years ago, and after two surgeries, my ring finger still won't straighten out completely. To this day, there are some chord patterns I just can't reach. One thing that helped me, was "rolling" my fingers. Starts with the tip of the finger on the thigh, and slowly moving the hand towards the knee, thereby gently rolling the joints over and stretching the tendons. This certainly won't help with any underlying neurological control problems caused by the stroke, but it will definitely keep the finger joints from stiffening up.

 

[TBurst Std]

We may need to start a different thread on this. I too have a physical limitation. (It's what caused me to give up being a pro musician and learn to write with my other hand).
8 weeks ago I reinjured the remaining ligament for downward motion of the ring finger.  It's not healing well. 

 

[TBurst Std]

That video confirms what I always thought. Django was not ever in standard tuning.

 

[Logrinn]

We may need to start a different thread on this. I too have a physical limitation. (It's what caused me to give up being a pro musician and learn to write with my other hand).
8 weeks ago I reinjured the remaining ligament for downward motion of the ring finger.  It's not healing well.

That sucks. Is operation an option?

That video confirms what I always thought. Django was not ever in standard tuning.

Do you mean he's tuned to E-flat or that the strings are not tuned in fourths?

 

[AirCap]

He did start his playing days on Banjo....

Perhaps this 3 page article has some answers?
https://www.premierguitar.com/articles/Style_Guide_Django_Reinhardt_and_Gypsy_Jazz

 

[TBurst Std]

We may need to start a different thread on this. I too have a physical limitation. (It's what caused me to give up being a pro musician and learn to write with my other hand).
8 weeks ago I reinjured the remaining ligament for downward motion of the ring finger.  It's not healing well.

That sucks. Is operation an option?

That video confirms what I always thought. Django was not ever in standard tuning.

Do you mean he's tuned to E-flat or that the strings are not tuned in fourths?

Already had surgery upon original injury.  Hoping current injury heals as I can't afford it (it was 40k back in early 1984).

 

[mayfly]

Wow.  As bad as the Canadian health care system is, it's a damn sight better than that!

 

[torpedovegas]

That video confirms what I always thought. Django was not ever in standard tuning.

Yeah, unfortunately the gentleman I'm teaching has been playing guitar for a while so a new tuning would be pretty hard especially since it would mean re-learning all the chord shapes we've gone through.  Another struggle would be finding a tuning that would equally accommodate chords as well as "two finger noodling," from everything I've read, Django used standard tuning.

I tried my hand at creating some two-finger scale patterns yesterday.  An open scale pattern for A major and a closed pattern for others.  They're pretty similar to a lot of the CAGED system scales with a few minor tweaks and extended runs up a single string.  The biggest trouble are 2nd intervals.  On a single string it can be accomplished by sliding the middle finger, but it's not super sustainable, and helps if you can go to an open string next.  Basically if there's any big jumps in the scale, best to do them in the direct of the finger that's expected to hit it, in this case, one of two fingers.  He could definitely efficiently use the open scale forms if he capos.

Anyway, the gentleman in question is a great guy and he really likes learning with me and enjoys himself, I just want to make sure he's able to get the most he possibly can out of the guitar.  I firmly believe music and the guitar are for everybody regardless of disability (I mean within reason, I don't think Stephen Hawking could play the guitar).

 

[Cagey]

I can also sympathize - I've had a pinched ulnar nerve for about the last 6 weeks that makes the ring, pinky and lower section of the left hand numb. I can move them, but I can't feel anything but an unpleasant tingle. Can't play, and it makes it tough to type or handle tools, too.

But, enough shark stories. It looks to me like Django may have done some extensive work on the coordination between his left and right hands, allowing him to voice more notes on one or two strings than you might if you could just move to another string in the same position. Watch his left hand - he's up and down the neck quite a bit, but not for glissando or position changes - he's still articulating notes along the way. The timing to do that would be really tricky without a lotta practice.

Obviously, with only two fingers you can't be sweep-picking through arpeggios, so exercises utilizing alternate picking with some serious metronome discipline to prevent moving outside the time constraints would work toward improved accuracy. Improved accuracy means you can go places you might not attempt otherwise. Gotta slow down to speed up.

 

[stratamania]

Somewhat off at a tangent, but there is always slide guitar as an option.

 

[Cagey]

In my experience, trying to play slide is enough to piss off a saint. Some (few) guys can do it, but it seems to be a mindset sorta thing that you either embrace or ignore with all your might. Brian May and Billy Gibbons are a couple of the few players I've heard who only bring it out once in a while and still pull it off. Otherwise, it seems you're either a slide player or you're not.

 

[AirCap]

Sonny Landreth, Jeff Beck, Ry Cooder, and David Lindley all leap to mind as great slide guitarists.

 

[musicispeace]

Didn't Gary Moore favor using his first and second finger in pentatonic blues scales whereas most people would have used their first and third? Its not the style of music you are researching but perhaps there is an interview tid bit where Gary talks about it or some clear video.

 

[Cagey]

A lotta famous guitar players didn't follow conventional wisdom about fingering, which is maybe part of what gave them their signature sound. Jimi Hendrix, for instance, was a big thumb guy. According to convention, fretting with your thumb is strictly forbidden, for a variety of good reasons. But, it let him do other things. Gary Moore was a very deliberate player who liked large interval bends, so he needed some serious strength to push those strings that far and in some cases apply vibrato to them. That meant he needed to use his strongest fingers, a set the pinky typically isn't included in. Joe Satriani is big on legato, vibrato, hammers and pulls, so he tends to pick strategic fingering positions that set him up for the next note. Sometimes, it's a matter of voicing. The exact same notes are repeated many times on a guitar's fretboard, but they all have a different character depending on which string/fret they're played on. This drives some players to race all over the neck to get the voicing they want, while others can stay more or less in one place to hit them all.

So, who's right? Nobody. Everybody. Is it music, or not?

Life...uh... finds a way.​

I think many players find a way to get to where they want to go from a deep set desire to be able to play what they want to hear, which maybe isn't how things are typically done. But, you can't argue with success. So, perhaps rather than find an exercise that exacerbates unconventional fingering, find a destination the player wants to arrive at and allow him to find his own way, with strategic assistance to ease the journey.

 

[TBurst Std]

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