Swing/big band rhythm - reducing 4 chords in a bar to 2

[Christian Miller]

Pasquale Grasso, bass and drums behind Samara Joy.

You can hear clearly, and sometimes see, the guitar fully functioning in the role more often seen filled by piano.

PG has all the chops one can imagine and yet falls in behind the vocal with simpler stuff that grooves great. Same when the bass solos.

Same with Cecil Alexander

I’ve seen Peter Bernstein comp this way too, even Ben Monder plays fours sometimes…

[Ozymandias]

The band I'm playing this stuff in definitely needs the 4s. Basically we're a backing band for a singer and the music is also for dancing. We have arrangements for discounted prices for members of local dance societies. They get in a bit cheaper, we get the dance floor filled with good dancers and a buzzy atmosphere.

I've been listening to some more contemporary singers do this stuff - there's a spate of them, but Seal's "Standards" album has some good examples. He used guys that worked with Sinatra, but the sound is somewhat modernised - the guitar is higher in the mix, you can hear it much more clearly, and the tone is more unapologetically electric. But it's still essentially the FG fours approach on the songs that call for that.

[garybaldy]

My experience fwiw is that I basically learned this on the bandstand. Couldn’t take charts home etc.

I know the feeling!