01 Oct A lot of new guitarists in the Gypsy Jazz genre have the same dilemma
A lot of new guitarists in the Gypsy Jazz genre have the same dilemma: Should I learn the Rest-Stroke picking method (The Gypsy traditional picking technique) or not? ...
Author: Yaakov Hoter
05 Sep How to Improvise with the Half dim Arpeggio over the Blues and add a Trill Ornaments
In this lesson, we will learn how to improvise with the half dim arpeggio over the dominant chord to get the 7add9 sound....
24 Jul La Pompe
In this lesson, I will talk about the Gypsy Jazz accompaniment, La Pompe, and about a very important and interesting question I got from one of the students of my La Pompe course....
26 May How to simplify chord progressions
Some songs have so many chords that change so fast that it's very hard to improvise over them. You find yourself just running after the chords and after the form of the songs. Maybe you can follow the form and you can play the "right"...
13 Jan La Vie en Rose – Gypsy and Jazz Chord Study
Let's talk about your chord playing and about your chord vocabulary. But , before we start, what are chords? A better answer, for our needs, than the basic definition of a chord as a set of (at least) three notes played together, would be to think...
20 Oct Talking Jazz with Evan Christopher and Yaakov Hoter – Part 3 Phrases, Performance and Practice
A person can know many phrases, Gypsy Jazz licks and Django Reinhardt's licks very well and still not have the knack of producing an interesting solo. You can think of phrases all the time and use them in your solos but always sound new. That’s...
26 Sep Talking Jazz with Evan Christopher and Yaakov Hoter – Part 2. Melody, Chords and Colors
A few years ago, my band, Swing De Gitanes, and I played a series of concerts with Evan Christopher - one of today’s leading clarinetist. Between the performances, we had a great time talking about music. We decided to record the ideas we talked about...
14 Sep Talking Jazz with Evan Christopher and Yaakov Hoter – Part 1. Swing, Groove and Time.
I divided our talk into 3 parts. In this first part, we talk mainly about swing origins, groove and time....
24 Feb How to Spice Up Your Accompaniment
I remember when I was young and started to play, I always used to sit around and play songs that I learned from a real book or something and would just play the straight chords....
24 Feb How to Spice Up Your Melody Playing
In this lesson, I show you how to play a melody all by yourself and how to make it interesting. One thing I love to do is to add chords to a melody. ...