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These gypsy jazz licks are from Reinier Voet’s 50 Gypsy Jazz Guitar Licks You MUST Knowcourse which not only offers a hand picked collection of versatile and essential gypsy jazz lines and phrases — its also a an homage Django Reinhardt who innovated a timeless vocabulary that guitar players will still be quoting a thousand years from today.

Gypsy Jazz Lick #1: La Pompe

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In gypsy jazz the rhythm guitar is one of the recognizable components. In this section we’ll discuss ‘LA POMPE’, playing rhythm guitar in a gypsy jazz group.

Gypsy Jazz Lick #21: Blues en Mineur

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Lick 21 is a long arpeggio run that you should add to your collection of arpeggios. Aside from that, it is just a beautiful phrase and fun to practice! Interestingly, Django used only two fingers when playing single notes. This actually helped me to find out which notes he was playing and where on the neck he played them.

Gypsy Jazz Lick #23: Resolving Melodic Run

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A lot of Gypsy jazz tunes are in a minor key. So very often you will have the situation of a dominant 7 chord that wants to resolve to a minor chord. Here I’ll play you a simple, very obvious line from A7 to Dm. Needless to say that you can use this line anywhere you want. Just move it to the key that you are in.

Gypsy Jazz Lick #33: Augmented Sweep’n Slide

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The whole tone scale and the augmented and flatted fifth chords were used in more modern classical music. Especially by innovative classical composer Claude Debussy, who died in 1918. After his death the whole tone scale was given the name ‘Debussy-scale’. Django was a fan of Debussy’s music. The whole tone scale will give your solo a certain atmosphere. An atmosphere that Django liked!

Gypsy Jazz Lick #43: 1953 Modern Django

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With this lick I would like to explain how the alteration of a dominant7 chord works. This lick is similar to part of the solo in ‘Nuages’, played by Django Reinhardt. It shows you how Django used his guitar as a musical system. You can easily see how Django was thinking. In 1953, the year of his unexpected death, his playing had become more modern than only a couple of years earlier. His playing had been influenced by the bebop players of that time.

Gypsy Jazz Lick #48: East European Gypsy

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This is a nice and simple lick. I like this lick because it has kind of an East European character. When you play this up-tempo you’ll get a great effect that might remind you of a cymbalum with its fast swinging hammering attacks on the strings. This one works on both minor and dominant 7th chords.

Dig these gypsy jazz guitar licks? Reinier Voet’s 50 Gypsy Jazz Guitar Licks You MUST Know for much more including tab, notation, and jam tracks!