Submitted by delboy (see all reviews from this person) on 11/24/2010

Where Purchased: On Line from DjangoBooks.com

Overall Comments

Like most guitar players I've bought an awful lot of instruction material over the years and probably 95% of it lies gathering dust in a drawer or on a shelf somewhere. But every now and then one stumbles across a gem that becomes a truly well-worn and deserving friend.

Michael Horowitz's Gypsy Picking is one such book. I've long loved the gypsy jazz style, not just Django, but Stochelo Rosenberg, Romane, Gary Potter, Jimmy Rosenberg, Birili, etc etc My early attempts to play in this style floundered (and also foundered) terribly.

Then I heard mention of this book.

It's a slimish book (with a CD of all the patterns and exercises) - just 60 or so pages - and on a first glance it appears to be quite simple. When I saw that a whole section - some 15 pages or so - was devoted to playing patterns on open strings (i.e. the right hand only) I thought what's going on?!

But there's the rub. I'm a massive believer that the right hand (or should I say the picking hand) is *the* most important hand in this art of ours. As I read what Michael had to say, and as I applied myself to this style of picking, as I set a metronome going nice and slowly and started to really try and nail these patterns I suddenly started to get a bit of that Django sound. It felt good. It felt great. Sometimes going back to basics is just what we need.

Then... when I moved onto the next section and started to add the left hand patterns onto what my right hand was already doing the scales really did fall from my eyes and appear beneath my fingers. There was the sound and - unbelievably - I found very quickly that I could play some of these patterns far faster than I'd be able to using my normal picking style. It suddenly became clear why the Manouche players play this way.

There are limitations. This style of picking originated because of the need to project an unamplified guitar above the raucous crowds of Parisian nightclubs back in the day. It's not necessarily so required now. Playing runs up the neck works far more efficiently than coming down the neck. But it's all part of the style.

So having learned some basic patterns you then get to apply some cracking licks and scales and arpeggios to these patterns and have a whole lot of fun in the process.

There's a five chorus Django solo to learn and examine and break down. It's covered at a nice easy pace, and although Michael doesn't overtly mention this (maybe for copyright reasons) it is an actual Django solo from his Minor Blues recording. Django's version is far faster than Michael's version - something to aspire to!

There are recommendations of other recordings and artists to listen to and masses of other information and advice tucked away throughout the book.

I'm still a million miles from being able to improvise efficiently over songs like Minor Swing and Dark Eyes - but it's not because of the picking style and it's not because of any deficiences in this book - it's simply a very demanding style that requires constant attention.

Bottom line is that this is one of the few books I've read and applied and learned from cover to cover, I use the styles and techniques and licks in all my playing from time to time, and as a primer before moving on to other books and material in the style there is none better.

Overall Rating: 10