Customer Reviews

Learn To Play Django-Style Gypsy Jazz Guitar, vol. 2 [VHS]

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Gypsy Jazz is the popular term for the style of jazz music
made famous by Django Reinhardt, who along with Stephane
Grappelli formed the Hot Club of France in 1933. Also
known as "acoustic swing", this instrumental music is
infectous, and fun to play.

If you play acoustic guitar, you should familiarize yourself
with Django's music. Should you decide you would like to play
in the style, but can't find a suitable teacher, Paul's
video set is a good alternative to get you started.

Volume One is about playing rhythm, but in a bigger sense it
gets to the core of the Gypsy Jazz technique, which focuses on
a strong picking motion and fretting techniques, such
as "choking" the strings to enable the hair-trigger response
that is essential to this style. The video instruction format
is excellent for this purpose, as it allows you see the arm and
wrist action involved.

Volume Two is about soloing, and is essentially more
a primer on jazz improvisation, but includes some good
exercises to develop your technique.

This video is not about learning 400 Django riffs, it is
a study of how to tailor your guitar playing technique
to adapt to the Gypsy Jazz style.

I think that this is a horrible video.

The first 57 minutes teach you things like:
-what is vibrato
-how to do hammer ons, pull offs, trills
-A (G) major arpeggio (he plays it - no explanation like 'this is the root, then the 3rd, then the 5th, now I repeat it' or anything like that, he just plays an arpeggio. Big whoop.)
-augmented & diminished chords (he plays them with very little explanation other than one has a flat 5th and the other has a rasied 5th - at point he says that if you want to know more you should go buy a book!)
-A George Van Eps lick

OK, here is the thing... These are all EXTREMELY BASIC. These are things that anyone who has been playing guitar for more than a year or two should already know, for the most part. Maybe not inside and out, but he doesn't teach it inside & out.

For most of the above he gives only 1 example with very little explanation at all. None of this has to do specifically with Gypsy jazz.

Oh, but for the last 2 or 3 minutes he plays a Gypsy jazz tune. He could have taken the exact same video and played an Yngwie Malmsteen song at the end instead and called the video "neoclassical soloing" and it would have been just as "valid" as calling this a gypsy jazz video!

Now, I would imagine that someone wanting to get into Gypsy Jazz already knows how to do hammer ons and pull offs. If they don't then they need to continue practicing for many more years before hoping to tackle gypsy jazz. So who is this video for? Does Paul Mehling even know?

There is NO theory in this video at all. NOTHING! He does not tell you when to play the scales and trills, etc. that he shows you, or how they relate to the chords, or anything. There is no examination of rhythmic placement of notes when soloing (that would be the SWING portion of gypsy swing guitar). There is no examination of what scales django preferred over what chords, nothing like that at all.

The video is "here are some basic techniques that any beginning student of guitar should know about, now watch me play 1 Django tune with no explanation at all." There is no dissecting or ripping apart Djangos style at all as another reviewer suggested. Nothing of the sort. Neither is it a primer on jazz improv in my opinion.

The sad thing is that this video COULD have been so much more. Paul is obviously an excellent player, and knows the style. He doesn't teach it well though. There are lots of excellent guitar players that just don't make good teachers. Paul seems to be one of these. Someone should tell him!

I am now headed off to eBay to sell my video to someone else.

I would HIGHLY reccommend for anyone else trying to get into this style the hotclub website for some basic lesson info, and Stan Ayeroff's book

"The Music of Django Reinhardt 44 classic solos by the legendary guitarist with a complete analysis" MelBay pub, ISBN: 0-7866-3388-3

I really have to agree with the review by Alex F of GA. I don't know what the other two positive reviews were all about, but any actual viewer of this video would see the obvious flaws. Paul Mehling may be a great gypsy jazz guitarist, but just watching him perform a few solos in the reinhardt fasion (while entertaining and minimally insightful)is not my idea of learning to play in the gypsy jazz style. he gives the viewer a handful of techniques that he does briefly explain. mainly, a few django style riffs. but it is not enough material to constitute 'learning' a style of jazz.
if you don't already have a firm understanding of guitar theory or jazz concepts, then i would stay away from this video. in fact, i really don't know who this video should be geared toward at all. paul mehling does such a bad (non-existant) job of explaining what he is doing, it would take a mind-reading student to appreciate this video.
if you want to try your hand at the gypsy jazz style, first i would recommend becoming adept at playing conventional jazz improv and get a good grasp of basic jazz concepts, such as chord theory, circle of 4th, 5th, etc. etc. if you cannot solo fairly fast and maintain a level of comfort at higher tempos in the first place, then even the best gypsy jazz video will not help you play anything like django or other gypsy jazz guitarists. so lay down the foundation and then go for a gypsy jazz video.
it is my experience that there really are no 'great' gypsy jazz videos out on the market today. however, if you want to get your hands on a better gypsy jazz video (mehling didn't exactly set the bar high) then check out Ridge-Runner Video's Kelly Lancaster gypsy jazz guitar. It is part of Chord Melody- Music for the Advancing Guitarist. he goes a little more in depth with theory and what scales django would play over what chords, etc etc. beyond that, i would just flat out recommend staying away from these videos all together and invest in more real jazz instructional books and cd's.

I agree with everything the other reviewer from Rochester NY said. Beyond that I have been appreciating Gypsey jazz over the years without knowing it. A lot of the good licks played by Willy Nelson are Django inspired. Then I got a chance to hear the Hot Club of Cowtown down here in Houston and I realized I had several decades of real learning to make up for. I started to practice the scales and got some books, but there is no substitute for seeing someone do it. I learned a lot from the Doc Watson Video (by Homespun) and decided to try the Django video. I am not disappointed. The video (Vol 1 and Vol 2) is very well structured and leads you in a direction. It's done in a way that if you want to learn a couple of tunes note for note you can do that. But the greatest benefit is that you learn what makes the music work, and how to interpret it in your own style.