Road Tested Method Book Review: “Getting Into Gypsy Jazz Guitar” by Stephane Wrembel

Introduction

When it comes to exploring new method books, I have to admit that I am a “method book junkie”.  I am always on the look out for new approaches to the guitar to satisfy my curiosity and knowledge quest.  This is the first article in a series of reviews I will do on method books I have successfully “road tested” after months of practice.

 “Getting Into Gypsy Jazz Guitar” by Stephane Wrembel

The Gypsy Jazz Guitar style was almost entirely invented by the great guitarist Django Reinhardt. In recent years Gypsy Jazz has reached widespread popularity with many new and exciting players.

 

My mentor and guitar teacher, Dick Longale was a great admirer of Django and spent some time with Django as GI in Paris right after the war ended. I have always had a fascination with this music and desire to explore the unique style. I was looking for a methodology to transition from Bop jazz guitar to the Gypsy guitar.  After acquiring a Dell Arte Gypsy Jazz guitar in a great deal, the time was right to get started and Stephane Wrembel’s method book “Getting into Gypsy Jazz Guitar” published by Mel Bay was exactly what was needed!

 

For the last six months I have been working with Stephane Wrembel’s method book “Getting into Gypsy Jazz Guitar”.  Currently there are several method books and videos on the market covering this style and I did purchase two other books which I will not mention at this time.  Of the three method books, I found Wrembel’s to be the clearest and most helpful to making the transition to Gypsy Jazz Guitar and building the proper basic foundation necessary for the style.  I must warn you that this book is not for guitar beginners but is perfect for intermediate guitarists with a good foundation of theory and improvisation who want to start studying the nuances of this remarkable style. Although I prefer standard musical notation, which the book includes, it also offers tablature as well as useful visual fretboard diagrams for those who do not read musical notation.

Stephane begins the journey by discussing and presenting valuable daily picking exercises for students to build chops for the “la plume”  right hand technique. In fact, I have found these picking exercises extremely valuable for improving any plectrum style (e.g. bluegrass, jazz etc.) requiring a strong, quick and accurate picking approach.

Stephane then covers some typical Gypsy style chord voices. I found that not all of the voicings would work for me due to thumb reach. I was able to find my own suitable voicings using the bottom four set of strings to achieve a similar sound. Stephane clearly discusses the importance of the minor 6th and minor 6/9 chords instead of the minor 7ths in this music.

I found Stephane’s beginning approach to improvisation using major and minor triad shapes very useful and similar to an approach I have studied for the music of Charlie Christian….. I found this to be a very interesting parallel.

Stephane’s coverage and presentation of  the various arpeggios was extremely helpful; especially his presentation of open arpeggios horizantally on the guitar neck.  Both the harmonic minor scale and diminished arpeggios are a very important and integral part of the Gypsy Jazz style and Stephane covers them thoroughly with many tasty lines to practice. I found these sections to be excellent.

The only drawback I have with the book is that there is very little information  regarding finger positions and the student is left to figure these out on his own.  Through trial and error I found that most of the “open” arpeggios are best played with the first and second finger (like Django) and the other exercises sound best when limited to three fingers. I avoided using the fourth finger as much as possible to get the proper sound and feel of the music. Getting the proper fingering made me back track several times.

I am still practicing and digesting the material in this book daily and I estimate it will probably take a year of concentrated daily effort to fully get the basics down properly……but it will be well worth it!

 “Getting into Gypsy Jazz Guitar” is a well thought out and extremely helpful book for those wanting to study the Gypsy style. I highly recommend it!