django

Django achieves his sound with two things.

First, is his equipment. He played on Selmer guitars that have very little sustain and a heavy almost dead sound to them on the low end, while remaining very bright and lively on the high end.

Second, is technique. "La pomp" strumming is a combination of right hand and left hand technique. You need a good heavy stiff pick, that you can really drive in to the strings, and a strong right hand. There's very few up strokes in his songs. You are alternating hitting the low strings and the upper strings to get the tone you want, but almost always on down strokes. Each strum is accompanied by a choke by the left hand. You just let the notes sound, then pull up and mute. It's NOT a half-mute. Done correctly, the strings ring for ~64th of a beat, but are then muted.

Django had a very strongly developed harmonic sense and his chord choices show that. Lots of minor chords with odd extentions, diminished and augmented chords, and because of his left hand injury, he was often only playing upper-partial or lower-partials of the chord forms, letting the second guitar or the bass carry the rest of the chord.

Django isn't playing scales, he's playing music ;) You can get close to what he's doing playing with harmonic minor, hungarian minor, gypsy minor and diminished scales. But much of his lead work is focused on playing within the harmonic structure of the song, and not worrying about scales. For example, one of his favorite tricks is to outline a chord by playing a half step above and a half step below the chord tone, then coming back to the chord tone with a bend or a pull-off.

He also loved playing around with enharmonic upper partial chord structures and using substitute chords for his lead work. If the song has a chord who's upper structure is a diminished chord, he'll be playing his lead work around an enharmonic diminshed chord in some other scale completely.

Excellent reply, Kingpatzer 8) I'd been half-tempted to try and answer this one myself, but then I thought, no, I bet there's someone going to come through with a much better explanation if I just sit tight ... like NoteBoat did on the "beginner's Q&A/lead guitar help" topic ... and there you were!
You can get close to what he's doing playing with harmonic minor, hungarian minor, gypsy minor and diminished scales. But much of his lead work is focused on playing within the harmonic structure of the song, and not worrying about scales. For example, one of his favorite tricks is to outline a chord by playing a half step above and a half step below the chord tone, then coming back to the chord tone with a bend or a pull-off.

Classic analysis :D - I know in my heart what he's doing, and even to some extent in my head - but I couldn't have explained it half as well ...

Taken from another forum...
This is just about every voicing you need to play gypsy jazz tunes...

9th chords, ex. C9:

X32333

6/9 chords, ex. C 6/9:

X32233

ex. G 6/9:

3X2233

m6 chords, ex. Gm6:

3X2333

ex. Dm6:

X2323X

7#9 chords, ex. C7#9:

X3234X

7b9 chords, ex. C7b9:

X3232X

BARRE CHORDS

Major, ex. G major:

355433

7th chords, ex. G7:

353433

Minor, ex. Gm:

355333

ex. Cm

X35543

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And to spice things up, use the following substitutions:

major -> 6 or 6/9
minor -> m6
7th chords -> 9th chords, or 7#9s / 7b9s if you're leading into a minor chord.

Use your ears.

8)

well you must have done years on this thanks! i know i will never acheive anywhere near his standards but if i could have the pleasure of attemps this will do for me,, thanks again