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Learn Gypsy Jazz with Django Guitar Lesson
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Play your first gypsy jazz chords with one of the guitar legends of all time and the originator of jazz manouche style - Django Reinhardt, and his “Minor Swing” tune from 1930s. 🎻🎙️ Django was one of the first major jazz talents to emerge in Europe and was among the first to play jazz that featured the guitar as a lead instrument. Despite his left hand handicap (he couldn’t use his ring and pinky fingers due to injury), and playing completely by ear (he could neither read nor write music), he not only invented this hot-club jazz guitar style - he roamed freely across the fretboard like he had some kind of magical powers and 16 fingers and not only those two! WATCH: Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt - Gypsy Jazz Guitar Lesson (with slow playback) “Minor Swing” was composed in 1937 by Django Reinhardt and Stéphane Grappelli in Paris, France. Three chords (Amin6, Dmin6, E7) are fairly easy to catch. For solo, you can start with plain A minor scale, then switch to A harmonic minor scale (see video). I added a slow playback section to my video for detailed solo overview. Django’s handicap and his inability to read music didn’t stop him from creating a whole new genre of music, so there’s no excuse for you not to grab your guitar today and try these few intriguing chords in a simple rhythm pattern. Have fun jazzing out! 🙌 Vedran Gavric P.S. To get started with your own rendition, a backing track and full solo track are available for download here: Enjoy this beautiful melody and thanks for watching! Click here to play it -> Minor Swing by Django Reinhardt - Gypsy Jazz GUITAR LESSON |
What The Chord!
I'm an author of The Guitar Puzzle book, an educator and a musician who loves to talk about guitar, musical patterns, and content creation, also sharing a lot of free stuff (videos & PDFs). Subscribe and join over 2,300+ newsletter readers every week!
Hey my friend, Vedran here again - got something cool for you. This one’s a real gold - because once you see it, you can’t unsee it. I just posted an short interactive lesson on what I call the “B-Rule.” It explains why the fretboard breaks your patterns, shapes, and scale logic - and how to fix it visually. ▶️ Watch the B-Rule video here: 👉Click Here to Watch the YouTube Lesson You’ll see: How the tuning gap between G and B reshapes the entire neck Why scale shapes feel “off” across strings...
I Just dropped a new lesson that I think you’re really going to dig. Something very familiar with a twist. It’s all about adding chromatic notes to the pentatonic scale - a simple but powerful way to bring new flavor, movement, and tension to your solos. And I don't mean "Just add the blue notes" - adding the full chromatic range creates a completely new dimension! Especially if you're playing the b-shape pentatonic pattern across the fretboard. Whether you’re improvising or writing, this...
"Shine" by Collective Soul, with the phrase "let your light shine" is a metaphor for living a righteous life that illuminates the world around you. This song is not a religious one, but it is there to bring peace and call upon our inner power. It helps the ones in trouble, it helps me now, after my dad passed away last month, and I know he would want me to go back to my music, and shine even brighter. It hasn't been easy but here I am, thanking God and the Universe every day that I'm here,...