Home

Band

Concerts

Music

Gallery

Stage setup

Contact

Guest book
Topics > Right hand techniques

The -v-v- movement or how to play two consecutive downstrokes

This movement is probably one of the hardest to integrate and play naturally. Actually, one of the basic principles in Manouche guitar is to always use a downstroke when changing string, or to play important beats loud, which at first may seem counter-productive as far as speed is concerned. It's especially one of the toughest issues met by experienced guitarists with their share of "bad" habits. For the very least, playing downstrokes while sweeping strings downwards is still natural because it's common to all styles, Manouche inclusive. However, there's no such thing as upwards sweeping, and sometimes there is a need to make two consecutive downstrokes on the same string. At speedy tempos, this can become quite difficult and the wrist should be very innervated and muscled to make this gesture become smooth. Whatever you may try to find to justify the use of any non-Manouche technique to play Manouche, it is most probably wrong and you should persevere instead (I know, I did just that too).

Exercise

To get started with -v-v-, here's an exercise on the B string only (stroke note is D). on these videos, you can see that the arm does not move, the movement only comes from the wrist rotation.
(side view - 470 KB)
(front view - 440 KB)

Here's another exercise with string change for eigths 2 and 3.
(1.060 KB)

Exercise

A variation on the same theme and again on two strings.
(900 KB)

Exercise

Here's an example where -v-v- is used to stress the first note of a triplet without changing string. I'm not really good at it yet...
(1.250 KB)

Exercise

On a mini diminished arpeggio.
(1.240 KB)

Exercise

A lick that Biréli uses from time to time. The -v-v- with string skipping is the toughest part of it. Bugger!
(1.090 KB)

Going up and down a scale on the six strings

The issue here is to be as fluid as possible. On the way up, you should focus on keeping the pace regular when switching between alternate picking a sweeping on 2 strings. On the way down, you should stay as regular as on the way up, even though there's this additional -v-v- hurdle. It gives me a bit of a hard time as you can see on the video...
(1.430 KB)

Typical Rosenberg © lick

*The* Rosenberg lick which main difficulty is the number of consecutive downstrokes (but there are only 2 tough -v-v- in this). Of course, the Rosenbergs can play that at dazzling speeds.
(1.000 KB)

Last updated: 28/01/2007 - Serendipity ©2003-2007