Mel Bay L'Esprit Manouche: A Comprehensive Study of Gypsy Jazz Guitar
by Romane Sebastian, Derek Sebastian
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Book Summary Information
Author: Derek Sebastian, Romane SebastianEdition: Sheet music
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2004-04
ISBN: 0786668946
Number of pages: 336
Publisher: Mel Bay Publicaions, Inc.
Book Reviews of Mel Bay L'Esprit Manouche: A Comprehensive Study of Gypsy Jazz Guitar
Book Review: This is the only guitar book you need !
Summary: 5 Stars
In its foreword, the authors wrote "we sincerely believe we have created a major paedagogical and cultural work". After owning the book for a couple of week, I can sincerely say that this is a true statement. The autors introduce you not only in a detailed, meticulous fashion into the world of gypsy (jazz) guitar, but they provide from all jazz guitar methods I have so far seen the most understandable introduction into jazz music and its application to guitar. Granted, the typical jazz guitar book has the concept of introducing you to about 247 x 16 different scale and harmony patterns, with no prospect to learn anything playable within the first 15 years. Mostly, you are tortured with far to complex chord and harmony arrangements, and in the gypsy jazz literature, the typical procedure is apparently to start playing with Django standards, which leads you to nowhere, unless you are an extremely talented player, or have been adopted by Reinhardt family members somewhere in Alsace. This book, for example, starts with a four chord song (Swing for Ninive), and you are teached an arpeggiated solo over an Am/Bb6/E7 chord change. Harmonics are explained in detail and in a very clear and concise way. The fact, that Romane uses, with a few exceptions, his own songs in the book allows him to arrange the lecture patterns for a particular effective learning curve. I see this as a plus, not as a deficit. The material, although, is far from easy. Mastering the first song at 65% speed requires already a significant level of guitar proficiency. If you devote, say, two to three years of your life to this book,you will, however, achieve something. The wonderful situation is that it is all there , mapped out, nothing to guess, no enigmatic embellishment, you just have to pick up your guitar and study it. All the material is covered by original cuts from Romane albums on the CD which comes with the book, and in addition, all practice exercises are on the midi file. The comment of my fellow author (with the one star review) about the midi files is completely off, since the midi files are a a valuable tool to learn the beat and the phrasing of the exercises at any speed. If you don't like them, you can also slow down the original tracks by, e.g., using the windows media player and selecting a lower speed. The only thing which the book lacks, in my opinion, as a practice tool, would be an additional recording with only the rythm tracks of the songs, so that you can play along. Sure, as the authors recommend, you can record them by yourself and then play along. This is also likely part of the practice, but its more fun to play to a nicely laid out ryhtm track. Also, don't expect to much about rhthm playing itself (the "chompe"). I you are looking for that, you would need to search elsewhere. Apparently, Romane wrote also a treatise about that, but I did never had a chance to look into this. All in all, a true masterpiece.
Summary of Mel Bay L'Esprit Manouche: A Comprehensive Study of Gypsy Jazz Guitar
This massive book offers a comprehensive study of the Gypsy jazz or Manouche guitar style as perceived by French guitarists Derek Sebastian and Romane, two of the finest modern day practitioners of the Django Reinhardt style.Each of the book's thirty-six progressive chapters consists of four parts: A.) Technique developed through exercises, chord progressions/diagrams, and illustrations of fingerboard positions; B.) A harmony lesson with leads in the Manouche style; C.) Soloing techniques based on the harmonic structure of a given theme; and D.) Self-testing materials with answers provided at the close of the book.
The companion CD for L Espirit Manouche is unique in that it provides 98 play-along MIDI files that exactly parallel the order of the exercises, examples and pieces in the book as well as audio tracks of excerpts from eighteen Romane favorites from the Gypsy jazz repertoire. The MIDI tracks, which can be accessed via most audio players on PC or Macintosh computers, allow the student to play along with both short phrases and extensive rhythm tracks- at any desired tempo; The audio tracks on the companion disc can be played on any CD player.
L Espirit Manouche not only makes Gypsy jazz accessible; it offers an opportunity to master the Manouche style. While many exercises and tunes appear in both standard notation and tab, not to mention chord or fretboard diagrams, standard notation is predominant.
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