Swing Music

[Kosko]

So I've just recently been practicing swinging my notes. That is doing the looong - short - looong - short, instead of same - same - same - same. I've heard the technique as cutting a measure into 3 instead of 4.

I've found it more difficult than expected. I guess I've been used to playing my rythmes in straight 4/4 for a while so its just ingrained. But I'm really enjoying it too, fun finding something difficult that seems like it should be completely simple.

Ya know?

 

[steveb98]

Best thing to do is listen to a bunch of swing or jazz to get a feel for it. Some big band music like Basie or Ellington. Straight Jazz like early Miles or Coltrane and many others. There were great bass players like Ray Brown, Paul Chambers, Ron Carter, more modern John Clayton. The string bass work of Christian McBride and Stanley Clarke.

In general you are used to hearing music with the accents on 2 and 4 and swing it's on 1 and 3. Then instead of straight eight notes they are played like a eighth note triplet with the first two eights tied together. That is the way I was taught in school.

Listen and absorb that is the best way to start. Get Miles Davis CD "Kind of Blue" it is a classic and first Jazz CD for many, especially beginning solists.

 

[AGCurry]

Both of you guys are confusing swing and shuffle; you're describing a shuffle. A shuffle is a variety of swing but by no means all there is!

As you allude, swing IS a subdivision of the rhythm such that it becomes divisible by three. But you have 2/4 swing, 4/4 swing, swing waltzes, etc..

Kind of Blue is a great album but I could think of dozens of records I would choose over it to introduce someone to swing.

 

[steveb98]

Both of you guys are confusing swing and shuffle; you're describing a shuffle. A shuffle is a variety of swing but by no means all there is!

As you allude, swing IS a subdivision of the rhythm such that it becomes divisible by three. But you have 2/4 swing, 4/4 swing, swing waltzes, etc..

Kind of Blue is a great album but I could think of dozens of records I would choose over it to introduce someone to swing.

No confusion here Swing or Rolled Eigth's as sometimes called are very different from a Shuffle. Shuffle is more typical in Blues or the Bernard Purdie Funk-a-Shuffle type feels. Shuffle in general are a Dotted Eighth-Sixteenth if written out.

It's all about how the eighth notes are played. Swing implies the eighth note triplet with first two eights tied together. Shuffle is a short pickup hence the dotted-eighth-sixteenth.

 

[Kosko]

Both of you guys are confusing swing and shuffle; you're describing a shuffle. A shuffle is a variety of swing but by no means all there is!

As you allude, swing IS a subdivision of the rhythm such that it becomes divisible by three. But you have 2/4 swing, 4/4 swing, swing waltzes, etc..

Kind of Blue is a great album but I could think of dozens of records I would choose over it to introduce someone to swing.

Would you please?

Maybe specific pieces to try out to practice the techniques and variations thereof?

 

[AGCurry]

It's all about how the eighth notes are played. Swing implies the eighth note triplet with first two eights tied together. Shuffle is a short pickup hence the dotted-eighth-sixteenth.

If you're playing BASS on a swing tune, you'll be playing half notes or quarter notes either way - unless you decide to actually play the shuffle pattern ON the bass. I'm just trying to clarify that, while a shuffle is swing, swing is not a shuffle.

 

[AGCurry]

In general, almost any popular music recorded from 1935 to 1950 will be swinging.

Anything by Count Basie and his Orchestra.
"Boss of the Blues" by Big Joe Turner.
Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grappelli with the Hot Club du Paris.
Bebop - Charlie Parker.
Artie Shaw, Benny Goodman, Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Benny Goodman trio and quartet - no bass!