Music & learning materials

I am a specialist gyspy jazz rhythm guitar player - I never take solos when playing with Djangoism and in fact I didn’t play any single line guitar for 5 years after forming Djangoism. However as a hobby I have started to play some lead gypsy jazz guitar which I may use in gypsy jazz jam sessions but at the moment is confined to the practice room. There are quite a few sources of gypsy jazz playalongs and I use Dave Kelbie’s excellent Sauce for keeping my rhythm guitar playing in trim for gigs. I also use Robin Nolan’s playalongs and was delighted to find Lulu Swing in volume 5 because I have been watching a video clip of Tchavolo Schmitt and Romane playing this for a while. However when I came to try to play along with the playalong I found it much too fast for my elementary single note technique, I was struggling to play the tune let alone any quaver-based solo lines. I recorded my own backing track (using Garageband and an M Audio interface) without a metronome but found I had recorded that too fast. I then got the metronome out and found the tempo that I was comfortable at playing the tune, which was 132 beats/min rather than the 180 beats/min of the playalong. Robin Nolan does provide slow and faster versions on his Essential Gypsy Jazz Licks CD but I don’t think I will be the only novice guitarist who will find almost all other playalongs too fast.