I think i finally figured out how to swing

[Tal_175]

This is interesting. However I think the phenomenon shown 6:46 onwards have a simple explanation. Art Blakey is accenting upbeats and Freddie Hubbard is locking in Art Blakey's rhythm. This is natural since those up beats are the audible, emphasized beats and downbeats are a lot harder to hear. Looks to me like Art Blakey is dictating how the swing is played here.

[Vladan]

Twitter

So there is a classical dude, a few dancers of unknown provenance and an immediate musical connection.

Dude, being classical, or not, is irrelevant, because dancers were responding to back beat of the backing track.
"Hooked on CLassics" shtick.

[MarkRhodes]

One thing that made me go "uh ... hmmm ... oh, right ... " on swinging was a bit in a jazz brass workshop years ago when Bill Watrous told the group "None of you guys is ever gonna swing if you can't nail your down-beats every freaking time."

He told us swing is the up against the down, and if the down varies ... there's no way to make the up hard.

Thanks for that! I'd never heard it put that way. Makes sense.

[Freel]

Dude, being classical, or not, is irrelevant, because dancers were responding to back beat of the backing track.
"Hooked on CLassics" shtick.

Sure enough, but I was responding to some prejudice earlier in the thread, attempting to show that people can get on perfectly well without it. I doubt that there would have been any dancing if the fiddle player wasn't tight.

D.

[joe2758]

This is interesting. However I think the phenomenon shown 6:46 onwards have a simple explanation. Art Blakey is accenting upbeats and Freddie Hubbard is locking in Art Blakey's rhythm. This is natural since those up beats are the audible, emphasized beats and downbeats are a lot harder to hear. Looks to me like Art Blakey is dictating how the swing is played here.

Not sure if I understood this correctly, Tal. To me, Blakey is establishing where the down beat is and then how “swung” the 8th is. Then hubbard is choosing to lock in with the up beat and play straight so that their down beats don’t line up, as opposed to locking into both Blakey’s down AND up beats, or locking in with the down beats and playin straight so there’s a pull against the drummer’s up beat.

So there’s the drummer’s swing, and then how the soloist pushes and pulls against either the up or down beat. In the example hubbard pulls against the down beat

[MarkRhodes]

While we're at it.

That level of "natural" swing is a rare and precious thing.

[Tal_175]

Not sure if I understood this correctly, Tal. To me, Blakey is establishing where the down beat is and then how “swung” the 8th is. Then hubbard is choosing to lock in with the up beat and play straight so that their down beats don’t line up, as opposed to locking into both Blakey’s down AND up beats, or locking in with the down beats and playin straight so there’s a pull against the drummer’s up beat.

So there’s the drummer’s swing, and then how the soloist pushes and pulls against either the up or down beat. In the example hubbard pulls against the down beat

If you just go to the second 6:56* where it's slowed down. You can slow down more on youtube if you like. I hear and see that up beats are accented by Art Blakey and Hubbard's up beats are aligned by those accented up beats, no?

*EDIT: Starts right at 6:55 actually and continues through 6:56.

[Freel]

Glad you enjoyed it Mark, I think they caught the dream I described earlier.

Bernard Zacharius' trombone playing on this recording KILLS me.

I think he comes from this tradition, which is weirdly reminiscent of New Orleans, ESPECIALLY the low brass. If it's not your thing you should at least hold out long enough to treat yourself to the magic that happens at 1.20

D.

[christianm77]

I wouldn't make it too technical and I wouldn't break it down too much. Your ten-to-ten thing was quite good. If they can sing it, or just say it, they can play it.

Just the basic feel is good enough (and if they're any good they'll get it instinctively anyway) then you can tidy up the details later.

It's actually a very basic rhythm anyway, isn't it? Dum-de-dum-de-dum :-)

If they aren’t instinctively getting it - and some do - you have to find a way to break it down.

Listen to Jimmy Raney and tell me he’s going Dum-de-dum-de-dum lol

[Tal_175]

Just to clarify a bit more. Starting from 6:54 or so where it's slowed down, if you just look at the staff notation at the top of the video and follow the the moving bar, it's pretty easy to see that all up beats are aligned with the accents of Art Blakey.
My point is, if the drummer I'm playing with is accenting up beats like in the video, my up beats would be aligned with the drummer. Not because I'm the master swing but it'd be harder to do otherwise. Does that not make sense?

[christianm77]

This is interesting. However I think the phenomenon shown 6:46 onwards have a simple explanation. Art Blakey is accenting upbeats and Freddie Hubbard is locking in Art Blakey's rhythm. This is natural since those up beats are the audible, emphasized beats and downbeats are a lot harder to hear. Looks to me like Art Blakey is dictating how the swing is played here.

Well I don’t know about the science, but two bits of advice that I have had and pass on to my students is 1) don’t dot too much 2) lock into the upbeats

If you can tap or sing the upbeats when you hear a record, give the upbeats equal weight in your playing and play along with the record in the pocket the you will be able to swing.

And the pocket does seem to mean, focus on the position of the upbeat in your line with reference to the ensemble. That bit of information I’ve found useful.

The quantification of that I’ll leave to the academics, I don’t really care.

[christianm77]

Just to clarify a bit more. Starting from 6:54 or so where it's slowed down, if you just look at the staff notation at the top of the video and follow the the moving bar, it's pretty easy to see that all up beats are aligned with the accents of Art Blakey.
My point is, if the drummer I'm playing with is accenting up beats like in the video, my up beats would be aligned with the drummer. Not because I'm the master swing but it'd be harder to do otherwise. Does that not make sense?

Can you swing?

[Freel]

If they aren’t instinctively getting it - and some do - you have to find a way to break it down.

Listen to Jimmy Raney and tell me he’s going Dum-de-dum-de-dum lol

He's feeling every subdivision as a unique entity. A bar is not a bar but part of a four bar section. A beat ain't a beat but it is 'that' beat, different from every other one in the bar and different from the ones in the other bars because of the previous sentence.

Sometimes this is described as 'an eagles eye view'. Best way to get this is to drum and sing along with good vocalists. Next step is to make your metronome do it.

Other things that help are asymmetrical counting patterns such as Son and Rhumba clave's in both inversions, the Cascara and the various other Afro Cuban bell patterns.

I don't know how Jimmy got it, probably by playing tunes well.

D.

[Freel]

Oh I should have mentioned, if you recite the Cascada aloud whilst playing technical exercises like scales you should very naturally develop the ability to accent ANY part of the bar with control and relaxation, which is another thing that helps music live.

D.

[christianm77]

Or let me put it another way - is your interest in this issue primarily practical or intellectual?

[Freel]

Sorry, I should have helped with the nuts and bolts.

A good way to memorise the Cascara is this phrase.

I don't like Carrots-I like Potatoes, reverse the order of the phrases to invert the rhythm.

Learn to recite that whilst drumming hand to hand, then maybe some picking exercise, then scale fragments, then ....get creative.


D.

[Tal_175]

Can you swing?

I'm not sure what a particular individual means when they say swing. According to people I studied with apparently I have good grove, but I was paying them I don't know what other people think
I think you misunderstood me. I am not disagreeing with you on your emphasis of upbeats.
I'm just pointing out that in the video Hubbard's alignment with up beats seem to be dictated by the accents of Art Blakey. I didn't post this video which discusses the scientific breakdown of swing, I just watched it because I was reading the thread.

[joe2758]

is it possible blakey was accenting the up beat because ?of how hubbard was swinging at that time? yeah it would sound pants, as we like to say, if the drummer was accenting up beats and the soloist was trying to swing by locking in with down beats and playing straight. or maybe it would be awesome who knows

[Tal_175]

Well I don’t know about the science, but two bits of advice that I have had and pass on to my students is 1) don’t dot too much 2) lock into the upbeats

If you can tap or sing the upbeats when you hear a record, give the upbeats equal weight in your playing and play along with the record in the pocket the you will be able to swing.

And the pocket does seem to mean, focus on the position of the upbeat in your line with reference to the ensemble. That bit of information I’ve found useful.

The quantification of that I’ll leave to the academics, I don’t really care.

Very good stuff. When I listen to the records I lock in with 2 & 4's. If I know the tune, I try to follow the form. I'll try paying attention to upbeats as well from now on as you suggest.

[joe2758]

yeah Tal I been doing that since i made this post, and i found it funny at first how i kept landing (i was tapping the up beats) on the drummer’s snare comping

[joe2758]

or i should say since the music is fast i was tapping random “ands” of the various beats

[christianm77]

I'm not sure what a particular individual means when they say swing. According to people I studied with apparently I have good grove, but I was paying them I don't know what other people think
I think you misunderstood me. I am not disagreeing with you on your emphasis of upbeats.
I'm just pointing out that in the video Hubbard's alignment with up beats seem to be dictated by the accents of Art Blakey. I didn't post this video which discusses the scientific breakdown of swing, I just watched it because I was reading the thread.

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack, but I would say that a basic aspect of swing is how to articulate 8th notes and place them whether they are syncopated or not... Just basic even execution of 8th notes.

We could talk about pushes and accents (the cascara/clave thing is hip BTW - try playing parker heads with a clave, Moose the Mooche is a 3/2 clave), triplets and all sorts of things being part of swing and the rhythmic vocabulary, but as I understand it Joe's focus was just on this basic element.

I spend quite a lot of time actually straightening out the 8ths of students from the horrible jerky dotted 8th, 16th swing or the corny doo-be-doo-be-doos (what Destiny used to call the 'twee bounce') - even those who are otherwise excellent players. Often people who listen mostly to things like Hip-hop, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Snarky Puppy, Glasper etc actually are the worse culprits, even though you would think the opposite lol. They actually overcompensate.

OTOH if they can't feel the swing bounce 'ands' of the bar, they won't swing at all... So you have to (I think) tackle the problem from both ends. (Of course I have no idea if you are making any of these mistakes or not.)

I think the written out ideas of 'swing' such as found here Swing (jazz performance style) - Wikipedia are incredibly unhelpful.

[Tal_175]

And the pocket does seem to mean, focus on the position of the upbeat in your line with reference to the ensemble. That bit of information I’ve found useful.

In the video "in the pocket" is defined as being a little behind the beat. I think Emily Remler used the term in the same sense in her Hot Licks video (I might be wrong, I watched it a while ago).
Terminology in music seems to be associative rather than definitive.
Even the term upbeat which seems to have originated by conductors' hand gesture to indicate the last beat of a measure (and the downbeat is the gesture of for the first beat), but at least in jazz it's used differently.

[wzpgsr]

i watched the video, the last bit is exactly what i’m talking about

So upbeat synced with the pulse of the drummer's upbeat, downbeat where it feels good?

[joe2758]

Often people who listen mostly to things like Hip-hop, Kurt Rosenwinkel, Snarky Puppy, Glasper etc actually are the worse culprits, even though you would think the opposite lol. They actually overcompensate.
.

dude i was at a wedding and this spanish hiphop song came on and i was like “that rapper is swinging like MAD.” like in what i would consider a really nice feel. i always knew good hiphop is no joke- but this guy was like a horn player