Reinier Voet's Gypsy Jazz Melodic Soloing Guidebook

Create Compelling, Melodic Gypsy Jazz Guitar Solos

Building a strong melodic solo is one of the most important skills an improviser needs, especially when soloing in the Gypsy Jazz style. You need to use solid building blocks to structure and present your solo into a seamless, engaging story that your audience will want to listen to.

Master Gypsy Jazz guitarist, Reinier Voet will focus on this essential skill here in the Melodic Soloing In Gypsy Jazz Guidebook Reinier will demonstrate how to use the melody of the tune as an inspiration and then embellish it with a variety of improvisational tools and techniques. You’ll learn how to spice melodic solos up with minor6th arpeggios, chromatic runs, tritone substitutes, diminished runs, and much more.

”I'll show you some standard melodies and offer you several ways to construct a strong melodic solo. These solo performance studies will give you a solid grip on all the key concepts and you’ll learn how to be more creative and flexible in your solos. And, they're all great technical guitar etudes and you’ll find them a lot of fun to play!”

For each of the five performance studies, Reinier will focus on and demonstrate key Gypsy Jazz guitar techniques and concepts and then perform a solo applying those techniques and approaches in play.



Swinging Minor - ”When you are able to find and play the most common minor 6th arpeggios and their fingerings, it will give you a lot of possibilities for soloing over minor progressions. Minor 6 arpeggios give you that 'Gypsy Jazz Guitar' sound. So, any place where a 'normal' minor chord is played, use a minor 6 arpeggio in your solo. Another interesting application of the minor sixth is as a substitute for a Dominant 7th chord.”

Georgia In Town - ”In this performance study, I will start by playing the original melody. But, since there is enough space left for some improvisation, why not fill the remaining two bars with some arpeggios to illustrate the harmonies? Have a listen first, play the example, and last but not least: have a look at your fretboard, to start to recognize the arpeggio patterns. This will also make it clear where the melody is placed within the changing chords.”

G Minor Blues - ”In my first Truefire course, I suggested several ways to play with and around chord tones. We look at the fretboard and we can easily find the correct notes that will sound good over the chord that is being played. By recognizing our chord forms and their related licks and runs, we build a vocabulary of the jazz language. You can get this information just by looking at the chord and arpeggio-patterns on your fretboard, instead of mastering concepts from theory-books.”

This Thing! - ”Next I would like to explore the use of the diminished arpeggio. The beginning of the melody of "What is this Thing Called Love" is already a minor third. The B part also starts with a minor third, which makes it a perfect candidate for the use of Diminished arpeggios. These are repeating minor 3rd intervals.”

Clouds - ”Using Django's beautiful ballad Nuages as an inspiration, we will explore more options for melodic improvisation. Every Jazz musician from Armstrong to Coltrane has used Chromaticism in their solo improvisations. The melody of Django's most famous tune Nuages is particularly suitable for some chromaticism because the melody itself consists of chromatic lines. So why not use it as a general motif through your solo?”

Me For You - ”Let a standard lick be your inspiration! Instead of getting bored of playing that lick without variation, over and over: change it! You will see, I use the notes of the lick, but I don't necessarily play them in the same order. I should say: consider the lick as a very nice scale, and let's be inspired by the notes it gives you.”

Sweet Atmosphere - ”You might think this is the most simple idea there is: just playing chord tones! Indeed, it is. But, mind you: you really have to know your fretboard! When you know your chord forms, if you recognize the shapes of the chords by SEEING them, then the guitar shows you the way.”

Reinier will explain and demonstrate all of the key concepts and approaches along the way. You’ll get standard notation and tabs for all of the performance studies. Plus, Reinier includes all of the rhythm tracks for you to work with on your own. In addition, you’ll be able to loop or slow down any of the videos so that you can work with the lessons at your own pace.

Grab your guitar and let’s get gypsy with Reinier Voet!