Double Bass Comprehensive groove analysis?

[Tom Lane]

Can anyone recommend a comprehensive analysis and description of the different rhythmic grooves? Something that identifies the different types of swing, shuffle, rock, etc, grooves and explains what makes each different from the other? It seems as though someone should have classified the difference between a swing and shuffle groove while recognizing that there's nothing preventing a blended swing+shuffle. I've heard blues players talk about the different sub-genres of grooves in their music but I've never seen anything written on the subject.

 

[AGCurry]

Can anyone recommend a comprehensive analysis and description of the different rhythmic grooves? Something that identifies the different types of swing, shuffle, rock, etc, grooves and explains what makes each different from the other? It seems as though someone should have classified the difference between a swing and shuffle groove while recognizing that there's nothing preventing a blended swing+shuffle. I've heard blues players talk about the different sub-genres of grooves in their music but I've never seen anything written on the subject.

I don't know of any "scholarly" works on the subject, but I've seen (and posted in) multiple threads on the subject of swing and shuffle. A shuffle IS a subcategory of swing.

 

[Steve Freides]

I cannot answer your question directly, but I can tell you that recent versions of the notation program Sibelius include multiple playback options using the same words you've used, so clearly _someone_ has figured out the difference in a repeatable way. My own understanding is simply that the difference is how the beat is divided, e.g., one groove will have a slightly longer first 8th and slightly shorter second 8th than another.

-S-

 

[Tom Lane]

I cannot answer your question directly, but I can tell you that recent versions of the notation program Sibelius include multiple playback options using the same words you've used, so clearly _someone_ has figured out the difference in a repeatable way. My own understanding is simply that the difference is how the beat is divided, e.g., one groove will have a slightly longer first 8th and slightly shorter second 8th than another.

-S-

Thanks for your replies. Both helpful, but I wouldn't to add that I'm not just thinking of swing vs shuffle; I was just using them as an example. Off the top of my head I can think of several different grooves that I can *roughly* define, but it's just my own personal nomenclature and is doubtlessly wrong in many cases. Some examples:
- swing
- shuffle
- latin
- bossa nova
- samba
- swinging latin
- swing waltz
- jazz waltz
- straight-8ths
- funk
- swung ballad
- straight ballad
- blues
- jazz blues
- grinding blues
etc

 

[Steve Freides]

@Tom Lane, correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't some of the things in your list be differentiated by different actual rhythms, whereas things like swing and shuffle are written the same but played a little differently? E.g., I might think of a jazz waltz as having something like 8th, quarter, 8th, quarter in 3/4 time. Maybe not the best example, but I think the point is valid that some things will be written differently while others will only be interpreted differently but written the same.

-S-

 

[ShadowGroover]

Here you go

 

[Tom Lane]

@Tom Lane, correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't some of the things in your list be differentiated by different actual rhythms, whereas things like swing and shuffle are written the same but played a little differently? E.g., I might think of a jazz waltz as having something like 8th, quarter, 8th, quarter in 3/4 time. Maybe not the best example, but I think the point is valid that some things will be written differently while others will only be interpreted differently but written the same.

-S-

I think it's a good point to that meter is independent of groove and so you can have a swing waltz and a jazz waltz and a blues waltz, etc. In my mind, a jazz waltz emphasizes beat 2 and less so beats 1 and 3, thinking of Mile's rendition of Someday My Prince Will Come. I have no idea of anyone shares my "mind" on that, but that's how I think of it. That's one reason I asked the question - to have a more rigorous analysis without doing it myself.

 

[brianrost]

Tom,

Are you asking because you want to learn styles you aren't familiar with or just as an academic exercise? To me, it's all about listening to records and live music.

I've played in blues bands for decades and there are lots of different blues grooves. They sometimes have different names depending on who you talk to or where you live. Often it's just to give a player a rough idea...it's Muddy style, it's BB style, it's SRV style, it's T-Bone style, it's Chuck Berry style, it's funk, it's blues-rock, it's southern soul, etc. If a bandleader calls a song I don't know or even a song I do know with a different groove, then labels like those are enough for me to know what to play. To notate those on paper and expect someone to get it right by reading? Not really possible but writing out cliche bass lines to use in those styles, sure.

That "Bass Bible" books ShadowGroover mentioned looks oversimplistic to me because for one thing, there is no one zydeco groove. I've played in zydeco bands doing waltzes, shuffles, funk, two-beat and a bunch of other stuff. Before I started playing it I saw many Louisiana performers from multiple generations perform live and then studied their records. The most eye opening (or maybe ear opening) thing was being up on stage playing with actual Louisiana musicians instead of Yankees like me who didn't grow up in the culture.

 

[iAsh]

How do you talk about this stuff in ways that are meaningful to someone who doesn’t already know? If someone says “second line groove” you can transcribe something from Rebirth Brass Band and analyze the living **** out of it but applying theory to the notes on the page is only meaningful if you already know what second line is. Groove is an apprenticeship process not an academic one.

 

[DoubleMIDI]

The main problem is that there are many grooves for a style and more styles than you listed.

Latin for example is a conglomerate of a lot of styles. If you only know one of them it won‘t help you. Even if you get more specific like bossa nova, a brazilian style, there are different substyles where some may fit to a certain song (as typically be played) and others don‘t.
Even in jazz, limited to the common bop styles, you can use a style of mainly playing four quarter notes on the beat with some drops starting on the beat or a rhythmically more anticipating style (as long as the band supports that).

So any book or collection of style recipes can only give you a first idea what might be important to a style. But sticking to that won‘t be a long term solution.

Be prepared to try things out and to fail and recognize that. Try again and keep what works and eliminate what doesn’t. Also find out if it doesn’t work at all or not with the bandmates.
It is a lifelong working process to get better in rhythmical playing.

Books can help to understand a certain style of music and the role of the different instruments working together. This is specially important for the different Latin music styles where the groove is distributed between different instruments of the rhythm group.
And be prepared to find a song where your learned formulas won‘t work (i.e. a 7/4 Latin groove).

It’s not wrong to get a book about different grooves, but it might not explain any variations possible or impossible and can only be a starting point to explore the rhythmical potential of a certain style.

Listening to music is at least as important to any written information.

For me any rhythmically interesting song has its own style.

 

[ctrlzjones]

26007469[/URL], member: 191949"] It seems as though someone should have classified the difference between a swing and shuffle groove while recognizing that there's nothing preventing a blended swing+shuffle. I've heard blues players talk about the different sub-genres of grooves in their music but I've never seen anything written on the subject.

Our language and notation systems are kind of insufficiant to deal with musical time in a really meaningful way. It is one of the things where all representations are lacking important information.
It’s way easier to get what a groove sounds like when you hear it, nearly impossible when you read about it.

Swing and shuffle are coming from two different branches and can be understood better in their context. Otherwise it would be like comparing apples and potatos; it could make sense, but only insofar.

 

[scott sinner]

@Tom Lane, correct me if I'm wrong but wouldn't some of the things in your list be differentiated by different actual rhythms, whereas things like swing and shuffle are written the same but played a little differently? E.g., I might think of a jazz waltz as having something like 8th, quarter, 8th, quarter in 3/4 time. Maybe not the best example, but I think the point is valid that some things will be written differently while others will only be interpreted differently but written the same.

-S-

That's what I was thinking. Much is scored imperfectly on staves and stylistically there is an agreed push and pull of certain beats. It would be interesting and should be easier with MIDI's level of precision, to do a mathematical analysis of this, but I've not seen it. It certainly would be possible, but even in my own compositions, of mostly a rock genre, when we were toying with electronic versions, I found more subtle groove patterns than we had songs, i.e. some songs had more than one.

For the more gross beat/accent questions, OP, this article may be of interest:
The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms
http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/banff.pdf

 

[Tom Lane]

Tom,

Are you asking because you want to learn styles you aren't familiar with or just as an academic exercise? To me, it's all about listening to records and live music.

I've played in blues bands for decades and there are lots of different blues grooves. They sometimes have different names depending on who you talk to or where you live. Often it's just to give a player a rough idea...it's Muddy style, it's BB style, it's SRV style, it's T-Bone style, it's Chuck Berry style, it's funk, it's blues-rock, it's southern soul, etc. If a bandleader calls a song I don't know or even a song I do know with a different groove, then labels like those are enough for me to know what to play. To notate those on paper and expect someone to get it right by reading? Not really possible but writing out cliche bass lines to use in those styles, sure.

That "Bass Bible" books ShadowGroover mentioned looks oversimplistic to me because for one thing, there is no one zydeco groove. I've played in zydeco bands doing waltzes, shuffles, funk, two-beat and a bunch of other stuff. Before I started playing it I saw many Louisiana performers from multiple generations perform live and then studied their records. The most eye opening (or maybe ear opening) thing was being up on stage playing with actual Louisiana musicians instead of Yankees like me who didn't grow up in the culture.

My experience is the same as yours. A band mate or leader will feel that there's an important distinction to be made and that I'm not playing the groove the way they want me to, so they offer correction. Something like, "No, this is *swinging latin* not latin and those aren't perfectly straight 8ths, but not swung as hard as a typical swing either". After a while, I think I've accepted many of those criticisms as my definition for the distinctions but I'd like to find a discussion that puts the differences in a more concrete, comprehensive, and considered whole, rather than just "Bill's" idea of how some particular shuffle groove should sound like. "Bill's" definition isn't likely to be much better than mine, frankly.

Interestingly, I found myself defending Horace Silver's recording of Song for My Father over the holidays to a group of not very knowledgeable jazz snobs when they noticed that the soloists were swinging against a hard, straight-8th bass line. The conversation ended when I pointed out the 1) the groove works and 2) that's what artists do - they borrow from different previous performances and craft some new amalgam.

Finally, I was inspired to ask by a question one of my students asked and I hate having to reiterate that there's no international standards organization for music nor official nomenclature, just local cultural convention, and that there is no consensus or considered definitions for many aspects of music. And, as @Steve Freides , backing track makers have already taken some sort of stab at this and it seems ripe for a Ph.D. student.

 

[Tom Lane]

That's what I was thinking. Much is scored imperfectly on staves and stylistically there is an agreed push and pull of certain beats. It would be interesting and should be easier with MIDI's level of precision, to do a mathematical analysis of this, but I've not seen it. It certainly would be possible, but even in my own compositions, of mostly a rock genre, when we were toying with electronic versions, I found more subtle groove patterns than we had songs, i.e. some songs had more than one.

For the more gross beat/accent questions, OP, this article may be of interest:
The Euclidean Algorithm Generates Traditional Musical Rhythms
http://cgm.cs.mcgill.ca/~godfried/publications/banff.pdf

That is an interesting article! Thanks for posting!

 

[Tom Lane]

I think those are all good points: notation captures feel poorly, there are an infinite number of blends of grooves and so any list will be a simplification and generalization - a starting point, not an end-point, and, the end, all that matters is that the music groove, not that it follow some specific set of rules. Still, I think it's possible and as @Steve Freides already pointed out, backing track makers have already done something, so there is probably a rough consensus on what makes a groove one style and not another. I've heard the description of different samba styles for instance and the list was pretty finite, maybe a dozen or so, but it wasn't intended as a rule-book, just a description to give the beginning player a sense of the commonly played. I do think provided an example recording is a requirement and agree that listening is the best vehicle.

 

[Steve Freides]

a jazz waltz emphasizes beat 2 and less so beats 1 and 3, thinking of Mile's rendition of Someday My Prince Will Come.

I just listened to that - I would say it's two swing 8ths follow by two quarters. I get the feeling of emphasis on beat two, and I'd add that to the description because the 2nd 8th does kind of give a boost to the quarter on beat 2.

Have any other examples of a jazz waltz - I'm interested in this one, and searching YouTube was pretty useless.

Thanks.

-S-

 

[Tom Lane]

See what you think of this one:

 

[Tom Lane]

This one I refer to as a "modern jazz waltz" but I'm just making it up as I go. I do hear the groove as different than the other two and I stress beat two less than when I play the others. More like each beat gets the same stress.

Windows Chick Corea

 

[damonsmith]

I would say swing and groove are very separate. Swing is open and breathes. "Grooves" tend to be boxed in.

 

[Tom Lane]

I would say swing and groove are very separate. Swing is open and breathes. "Grooves" tend to be boxed in.

Of course you would!