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Tired of 4/4?

#42
fingerbun said:
Hi Stickman, I am posting not to argue but to educate myself. I totally accept that what you say is true, but I am not a jazz aficionado and I can't think of examples that support what you say.

That's why I'd find it helpful if you could suggest a couple of tracks that are swing, but not 12/8. So that I can understand it, not because you need to prove it.

I play a lot of jazz standards, both big band charts and real book stuff, but I don't have large variety of jazz in my music collection, because the jazz that moves me is mostly 40's pop (Andrews Sisters, Glenn Miller, Tommy Dorsey, etc). So when I play Autum Leaves, All Of Me or Satin Doll as swing, it comes out as 12/8, basically emulating what I am hearing on those records (as much as you can hear the bass on a 78 lol).

The fact that I keep getting calls, and that noone has said to me that I am not getting the feel suggests to me I am doing ok on those pieces at least. But I do want to know what I am missing.
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Well, 12/8 is a decent approximation of 4/4 swing, but it's not quite accurate. 12/8 is a regimented time signature with a specific triplet feel, where as 4/4 Swing can be either lazier or more energetic, sitting behind or in front of where the triplet would be in 12/8 and generally depending on the speed at which the song is being played. At slower speeds the swing will often be exaggerated past the triplet feel, and at higher speeds it will be close to straight 8s. If it were 12/8 then at all speeds the "swing" would feel exactly the same... so if you transcribed a song that was swung in 4/4 into strict 12/8 it would likely end up sounding more and more choppy as you sped it up, and more and more regimented as you slowed it down. On the other hand, when you write it in 4/4 but indicate to "swing" the tune, you are giving the musicians free reign to swing it as "hard" or "soft" as they want. It's specifically written in that way for that exact purpose.
 
#43
baalroo said:
Well, 12/8 is a decent approximation of 4/4 swing, but it's not quite accurate. 12/8 is a regimented time signature with a specific triplet feel, where as 4/4 Swing can be either lazier or more energetic, sitting behind or in front of where the triplet would be in 12/8 and generally depending on the speed at which the song is being played. At slower speeds the swing will often be exaggerated past the triplet feel, and at higher speeds it will be close to straight 8s. If it were 12/8 then at all speeds the "swing" would feel exactly the same... so if you transcribed a song that was swung in 4/4 into strict 12/8 it would likely end up sounding more and more choppy as you sped it up, and more and more regimented as you slowed it down. On the other hand, when you write it in 4/4 but indicate to "swing" the tune, you are giving the musicians free reign to swing it as "hard" or "soft" as they want. It's specifically written in that way for that exact purpose.
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Swing = rhythm

Lmao, j/k
 
#45
fingerbun said:
3. A lot of use of complex time signatures in rock and jazz has been done, imo, because the musicians wanted to be erudite in their ability to remember and count strange passages, not because of a sound they wanted. Contrast some Rush pieces (which I think have this tendency) to Pink Floyd's Money, which I think is an example of uber tastefulness. Orchestral music is a far richer source for tasteful use of complex and interesting time signatures imo.

P.S. not slagging Rush, appreciate their brilliance, just not my thing.
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I like Rush, but I agree that sometimes their songs don't really 'flow', or sound forced, at least on studio recordings. But from what I've read, Geddy and Alex write most of the music jamming together, without any thought to time signature, and then Neil tries to quantify the time signatures of what they've come up with. I suspect that's where the flow is lost. I also read recently that Neil has somewhat relaxed his need to quantify , and now just tries to play something that fits the music.
 
#47
My band plays a lot of stuff with odd meter here and there, but it doesn't sound like it is, at least most of the time. To us it just sounds natural but every time we play with an incompitent drummer they struggle mightily!!!
 
#51
I had a friend, Matt, in high school who wrote lots of stuff in odd time signatures, not because he wanted to, but because his material just came out that way. Once he wrote a neat drone riff in 10/4 (this is what our drummer - who was light years beyond us in knowledge and ability at the time - worked it out to be...Matt and I were playing it as two bars of 4 and a bar of 2 before we brought it to the band, but the drummer's interpretation got the feel of it better).

It wasn't even readily apparent that any of Matt's stuff was in an odd time until you sat down and worked it out. He liked a lot of artists that did odd time stuff, though, from Suondgarden and AiC thru Zappa, prog and jazz/rock groups.
 

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