I think i finally figured out how to swing

[joe2758]

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

yes, except in my case i’m not controling the down beat i just it it fall where ever it does when i play the 8ths evenly (which is behind the beat). im sure real players can control to the tiniest degree

[Freel]

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 seems to have originated by conductors' hand gesture to indicate 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.

I think you would enjoy this vid, I posted it earlier but maybe it got swept away as the thread progressed,

Mark takes a long time showing his METHODOLODY for working on the elements of feel that are being discussed. Nothing helps if we don't just sit down and work with it, all the graphs and stuff are really just trivia. You listen to the band and try and fit, or it can be the metronome as Mark shows expertly. It's all about listening, not about the interpretation of arbitrary language, that just goes round and round in circles, as it must.

The way you play should be constantly fluid and responsive, ie you should never try and be right, good is a much better goal.

If a technical explanation seems logically consistent but after having 'understood' it you are no further forward in refining your practice approach then it is just a piece of trivia. Good for arguing but of little use for playing.

Maybe some of you are wondering if I can swing. Well the answer is that I couldn't give a monkeys, if I feel good when playing then that is good enough for me.

D.

[lawson-stone]

Twitter

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

When I was six years old my dad would play accordion once in a while when my mum was out playing bingo.

Myself, my brother and my sister would find ourselves getting up and dancing and always right and always uncaring, it was no bother at all.

Thirty years later I had been studying hard, practicing every day studying classical guitar and would try and play with him. And I found myself the screwdriver among the spokes. He would look at me with pity that he could not disguise, but not unkindly.

He had learned to play by ear as a child and only for joy and I had started too late and been in too much of a rush and had missed the important things.

We are all born Supermen and bad practice is our Kryptonite.

But when we let our ego aside and instead be honest and patient we find that a little baby superman is there waiting to solve all our problems for us, by not giving a sh1t about anything but enjoyment. Play what you can, not what you cannot.

But yeah, nirvana, beginners mind, all that too.

D.

This reminds me of learning to handle horses, which, like jazz, I undertook as an adult. I kept reading stuff from a well known horse trainer who, like you, loved using metaphors, images, talk about feel and so on, and all I got was an unruly horse and a lot of frustration. I have as vital an imagination as the next guy, but nothing about all that you've said helps me at all. No offense to you, I know this works for you, but all it does is describe your feeling, not how I might get there.

Eventually I found a trainer who was a very astute observer of how humans and horses got along. We discussed my horse's background (rescue horse, previous abuse, left for dead, etc) as well as my own temperament, why I wanted to learn to relate well to horses, and we started with very simple, very concrete exercises, we actually called them "games" to play with the horse, in the round pen, no saddle, all on the ground. I was astonished to find that after just about 6 or 7 sessions of playing these silly but very specific concrete "games" with my horse he started paying attention to me, I started spotting his signals, we learned each other's language, and that launched me and that horse on a 15+ year journey together that only ended this past summer with him breaking a leg and having to be put down.

What I'm saying is for some, these images and feeling descriptions mean very little, or make us feel like we'll never get it.

I'm glad there are other ways to get there, or I'd have given up a long time ago when a guy looked at me and said, "Stone, you really don't swing, do you?"

[Freel]

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

I'm gonna go right ahead and say yes. And it might feel good in different ways as a piece and a performance unfold.

D.

[wzpgsr]

Something that always seems to get overshadowed by "when to play each 8th note" in swing feel discussions is "how long to hold each 8th note"? How much space between the notes, regardless of where they start or stop. Some players have an almost staccato feel to their swing. It's not always legato.

[christianm77]

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

Well, I mean that Kendrick track 'For Free?' is like an object lesson in that. Hip-hop with a burning acoustic jazz rhythm section. Swings as hard as any horn player.

Given the overlaps it's interesting that they DON'T apply that stuff to swing. I think it's partly the completely incorrect notation that gets described as written out swing. Even from people who actually know how to swing themselves! Mind boggling.

[christianm77]

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.

Hmmm.... the classic advice I have heard is 'straight and late' - Peter Bernstein, Mike Moreno, many others. Emily too by the sounds of it.

It's advice that works IF the student can feel the swing at the same time and lock in. Otherwise they will sound rhythmically uncoupled. This is the problem Joe had in the OP, if you recall, before we realised he had to lock into the upbeat.

Also, there is a confusion between causes and effects in language about jazz rhythm. For instance people talk about 'behind the beat phrasing' - this is an effect, not a cause. As Jonathan Kreisberg puts it 'people think this music is floating, but actually it's locked in.'

Wynton Marsalis points out the Billie's phrasing is heavily based on 1/4 triplets and this gives the phrasing that sounds 'behind the beat.' If a singer simply sings 'behind the beat' then it just drags and is all over the place rhythmically, we all know that awful carry on.

And so on. Matt normally chimes in at this point.

[joe2758]

Something that always seems to get overshadowed by "when to play each 8th note" in swing feel discussions is "how long to hold each 8th note"? How much space between the notes, regardless of where they start or stop. Some players have an almost staccato feel to their swing. It's not always legato.

good point. i always try to play legato (except for an accent or something. but i do give it a lot of mind when im play quarter note 44 rhythm; i try to let go roght on the up beat

[christianm77]

Something that always seems to get overshadowed by "when to play each 8th note" in swing feel discussions is "how long to hold each 8th note"? How much space between the notes, regardless of where they start or stop. Some players have an almost staccato feel to their swing. It's not always legato.

Like Dexter you mean? Any others spring to mind?

[Freel]

Eventually I found a trainer who was a very astute observer of how humans and horses got along. We discussed my horse's background (rescue horse, previous abuse, left for dead, etc) as well as my own temperament, why I wanted to learn to relate well to horses, and we started with very simple, very concrete exercises, we actually called them "games" to play with the horse, in the round pen, no saddle, all on the ground. I was astonished to find that after just about 6 or 7 sessions of playing these silly but very specific concrete "games" with my horse he started paying attention to me, I started spotting his signals, we learned each other's language, and that launched me and that horse on a 15+ year journey together that only ended this past summer with him breaking a leg and having to be put down.

That's a nice story Lawson, I enjoyed it.

OK, here you go, a childish game to learn to treat your metronome like a horse. (You are aiming at even notes here, adapt for swing once other things are solved).

1.Set your metronome at 40

2.Count 1e+A,2e+A,3e+A,4e+A

3. Get those A's perfectly in time with the metronome.

4. Lift your foot with A' and drop it when it feels good, that is the downbeat (ie on 1,2,3+4)

5. Take one bar of music that you are working on and play the first thing that happens, quite often a bass note on one for guitar music but really it can be anything.

6. Take the rest of the bar to think about wether or not playing that one thing interrupted your sense of the flow of the rhythm. It will probably take a lot of just playing that one note to notice.

7. Repeat 5+6
8.Repeat 5+6
9. Repeat 5+6 until you stop resenting it and are completely happy to continue
10. Repeat 9.....

11. Grudgingly add the next thing that happens in the bar (maybe it is a chord stab, or the second note of a scale or well anything. Just add that one thing, resist utterly the temptation to pretend that you wanted to play more than that, that is an illusion caused by a lack of control.

12. Keep adding one thing at a time until you notice that the quality is dropping, take a break and then go back to the start either with the same section or with a new one.

-------------

That's it.

I am so glad you shared your description of how gentle and fun learning is when we choose the right entry level. Yehudi Menuhin said something like this 'There comes a time in every musician's life when he needs to start over again from the very beginning and learn anew like a total beginner, that time is every morning.'

People generally learn a whole piece and then proceed to redo their mistakes over and over and over. The internet doesn't help, too much edutainment, people showing off and really not sharing the truth of what practice is.

I chose to share the story about my father because, no matter how difficult a person may find playing the guitar to be, we can all feel it when it is right. If you have the capacity to feel it then you have the capacity to make others feel it too.

When we learn too fast we tend to want to hold onto our bad habits because we did not give ourselves the time needed to think when practicing.

When anyone starts playing their IQ sinks like a stone and with it their ability to learn, that's why it is so important to work on CONTROL first and notes later, the control comes from saying NO to the habit of hacking through.

The above exercise will make EVERY SUBDIVISION UNIQUE, because in putting a piece together like this you learn to RELISH the special and unique character of every part of the bar.

Happy playing.

PS, I do this every day, except for the days when I don't improve.

D.

[joe2758]

i thought DG default is legato with staccato punctuations, not usally a string of staccato 8ths right?

[Freel]

i thought DG default is legato with staccato punctuations, not usally a string of staccato 8ths right?

Just put a record on that you like and have memorised the solo note for note. Play it at something like 20 percent speed, resist the temptation to care about how odd it sounds. Play along with the player for a short looped section ( a few bars ).

Try it like I just outlined for Lawson. or if you feel confident play the whole section with him.

Notice stuff, try and synch perfectly, be lazy where he/she is, be loud,soft,legato,staccato, wherever they are.

Speed up in 5 percent increments till you start playing rubbish, pick another section.

In no way will talking about minutia of an imaginary idealised perspective of an particular player do the things for your playing that this exercise will.

I really don't know why people are trying to put things in boxes with statistics. Play along with the record, but play smart, that's all anyone ever needed. Dexter played every bar different, so should you.

(for all I know you swing super hard and would shame me on the bandstand, but I am getting a bit frustrated by the fact that click bait videos of limited interest seem to be dictating the direction of this discussion)

D.

[christianm77]

In no way will talking about minutia of an imaginary idealised perspective of an particular player do the things for your playing that this exercise will.

I really don't know why people are trying to put things in boxes with statistics. Play along with the record, but play smart, that's all anyone ever needed. Dexter played every bar different, so should you.

(for all I know you swing super hard and would shame me on the bandstand, but I am getting a bit frustrated by the fact that click bait videos of limited interest seem to be dictating the direction of this discussion)

D.

Bloody hell I'm sorry I ever posted that video now.

Anyway, I only responded to what Joe said specifically. He said he'd found something which helped him, a concept I felt had helped me, and posted a video which seemed to back up his interpretation of swing eights.

[Freel]

Bloody hell I'm sorry I ever posted that video now.

Anyway, I only responded to what Joe said specifically. He said he'd found something which helped him, a concept I felt had helped me, and posted a video which seemed to back up his interpretation of swing eights.

Fair enough, I do think I mentioned the concept some time ago. I find it peoples approach to video intriguing.

I had a class of pupils who I struggled to get to listen to me, one day the classroom teacher put a video on of me playing electric, they were impressed.

I was depressed.

Anyway I guess that's just another story about me, I should be less selfish to stick to other peoples ideas and experiences, even if I don't really get them yet.

D.

[lawson-stone]

That's a nice story Lawson, I enjoyed it.

OK, here you go, a childish game to learn to treat your metronome like a horse. (You are aiming at even notes here, adapt for swing once other things are solved).

1.Set your metronome at 40

2.Count 1e+A,2e+A,3e+A,4e+A

3. Get those A's perfectly in time with the metronome.

4. Lift your foot with A' and drop it when it feels good, that is the downbeat (ie on 1,2,3+4)

5. Take one bar of music that you are working on and play the first thing that happens, quite often a bass note on one for guitar music but really it can be anything.

6. Take the rest of the bar to think about wether or not playing that one thing interrupted your sense of the flow of the rhythm. It will probably take a lot of just playing that one note to notice.

7. Repeat 5+6
8.Repeat 5+6
9. Repeat 5+6 until you stop resenting it and are completely happy to continue
10. Repeat 9.....

11. Grudgingly add the next thing that happens in the bar (maybe it is a chord stab, or the second note of a scale or well anything. Just add that one thing, resist utterly the temptation to pretend that you wanted to play more than that, that is an illusion caused by a lack of control.

12. Keep adding one thing at a time until you notice that the quality is dropping, take a break and then go back to the start either with the same section or with a new one.

-------------

That's it.

I am so glad you shared your description of how gentle and fun learning is when we choose the right entry level. Yehudi Menuhin said something like this 'There comes a time in every musician's life when he needs to start over again from the very beginning and learn anew like a total beginner, that time is every morning.'

People generally learn a whole piece and then proceed to redo their mistakes over and over and over. The internet doesn't help, too much edutainment, people showing off and really not sharing the truth of what practice is.

I chose to share the story about my father because, no matter how difficult a person may find playing the guitar to be, we can all feel it when it is right. If you have the capacity to feel it then you have the capacity to make others feel it too.

When we learn too fast we tend to want to hold onto our bad habits because we did not give ourselves the time needed to think when practicing.

When anyone starts playing their IQ sinks like a stone and with it their ability to learn, that's why it is so important to work on CONTROL first and notes later, the control comes from saying NO to the habit of hacking through.

The above exercise will make EVERY SUBDIVISION UNIQUE, because in putting a piece together like this you learn to RELISH the special and unique character of every part of the bar.

Happy playing.

PS, I do this every day, except for the days when I don't improve.

D.

I'll try-I'm not sure what 1e+A means. You want me to count "One-and-a Two-and-a..."

I'm not as dumb as I likely sound, but the beat description was a bit cryptic for me!

Also I'm delighted you didn't take offense at my comment; re-reading it I would not blame you. I'm at a strange point musically. When I started jazz 25-30 years ago, I really hoped to sit in with jam sessions and organize a little band and all that. It hasn't happened, and so now I'm really just trying to learn to play to delight my own sense of accomplishment. I want to play Joe Pass sort of sounding solo guitar and I want to be able to play bebop sounding lines. I'd love to do those improvisational, but I've learned the most from learning things note for note, it seems. At this point I just want to hear music coming out of my amp that does not suck. Doesn't have to be "mine" any more. I still hope to play for others, but in my little community it's just not likely I'll ever have an ensemble or a chance to play much for others, so I want to like my own playing.

Modest goals, but that's it. I doubt I'll ever get to the ideal sounding flow state you describe. Not resisting, just being honest about my future in music. Sucking less is my goal now.

[Freel]

Basically I'm talking about four notes per beat played even. Four syllables 1,e,and,a.

Internet is terrible for getting to know people.

It's good that you think you suck, you care and you want more.

Go easy on yourself, and thanks again for the story, I REALLY liked it.

D.

[mr. beaumont]

Like Dexter you mean? Any others spring to mind?

Pat Martino?

Actually I don't hear dexter as staccato at all. He does that thing where he plays dead straight against a swinging rhythm section though, that's just great, and instantly identifiable.

[joe2758]

[QUOTE=mr. beaumont He does that thing where he plays dead straight against a swinging rhythm section though, that's just great, and instantly identifiable.[/QUOTE]

yeah man that’s pretty much the topic of discussion

[grahambop]

Actually I don't hear dexter as staccato at all. He does that thing where he plays dead straight against a swinging rhythm section though, that's just great, and instantly identifiable.

I think this is what Jimmy Raney does too, in fact I think he said this somewhere, that bebop should be played fairly straight. I think he said a lot of what is perceived as swing comes from accents and shaping of the line somehow. (can’t remember where I saw this unfortunately).

Re. Dexter he sometimes does that thing where some notes in a line are ‘chopped’ short, presumably a tonguing thing (oo-er!). Maybe that’s what Joe meant.

[christianm77]

Pat Martino?

Actually I don't hear dexter as staccato at all. He does that thing where he plays dead straight against a swinging rhythm section though, that's just great, and instantly identifiable.

Yeah, I suppose not. It is heavily articulated though - he doesn't slur from the upbeat to the downbeat like some players.

The straight on swing thing is the subject of the thread. Straight is cool - it's where to fit it.

[lawson-stone]

I think this is what Jimmy Raney does too, in fact I think he said this somewhere, that bebop should be played fairly straight. I think he said a lot of what is perceived as swing comes from accents and shaping of the line somehow. (can’t remember where I saw this unfortunately).

Re. Dexter he sometimes does that thing where some notes in a line are ‘chopped’ short, presumably a tonguing thing (oo-er!). Maybe that’s what Joe meant.

having learned a bunch of Jimmy Raney solos, I can agree that his phrasing and shaping of the line is huge. When I listen to him, I imagine a guy on a tightrope or balance beam trying all kinds of tricks, periodically coming really close to falling off, but then recovering in some amazing and brilliant way. Jimmy Raney always sounds to me like he could wreck at any moment, but he never does. It's pretty exciting listening, and playing his lines and trying to find that same scary dynamic is fun. I also know when I try to "swing" Raney's lines they don't sound right, but when i play them more straight and let the notes and shapes do the talking, the feel is much better.

[christianm77]

One should never try to swing.

[matt.guitarteacher]

Hmmm.... the classic advice I have heard is 'straight and late' - Peter Bernstein, Mike Moreno, many others. Emily too by the sounds of it.

It's advice that works IF the student can feel the swing at the same time and lock in. Otherwise they will sound rhythmically uncoupled. This is the problem Joe had in the OP, if you recall, before we realised he had to lock into the upbeat.

Also, there is a confusion between causes and effects in language about jazz rhythm. For instance people talk about 'behind the beat phrasing' - this is an effect, not a cause. As Jonathan Kreisberg puts it 'people think this music is floating, but actually it's locked in.'

Wynton Marsalis points out the Billie's phrasing is heavily based on 1/4 triplets and this gives the phrasing that sounds 'behind the beat.' If a singer simply sings 'behind the beat' then it just drags and is all over the place rhythmically, we all know that awful carry on.

And so on. Matt normally chimes in at this point.

Ha. Sorry to obsess. It's just that this one is kind of personal to me, being something which only came to me in the last few years in a real meaningful way.

Beyond that, I hear a lot of talk about these things which shows that there's a lot of confusion at much more BASIC levels than is often being discussed. The discussion in this thread for example about "behind" and "ahead" is the real stuff IMO, the way pros talk about it, but very often, we hobbyists are using these SAME TERMS to describe actual rhythms, like triplets.

"Listen to so and so on this, laying WAYYYY back behind the beat". [Plays the video, and it's a quarter note triplet]. How frustrating is that? We're talking about 2 completely different things and using the same terms.

[wzpgsr]

Like Dexter you mean? Any others spring to mind?

A lot of Wes has that sound to my ear. I want to say “choppy”, but that’s not the right word. There’s a subtle gap between the swing eighths that lends itself to a sort of staccato-ish sound.

Bobby Broom is a player where I think there’s a very clear distinction between his legato eighths and his more staccato eighths. I just put some of his music on as I was writing this and there’s so much variation in swing feel in just one line, it’s really excellent. It sounds to me like he’s moving in and out of being ahead of the beat, behind the beat, staccato, legato, strong accents etc. All of this combines to make a really dynamic swing feel.

[christianm77]

Ha. Sorry to obsess. It's just that this one is kind of personal to me, being something which only came to me in the last few years in a real meaningful way.

Beyond that, I hear a lot of talk about these things which shows that there's a lot of confusion at much more BASIC levels than is often being discussed. The discussion in this thread for example about "behind" and "ahead" is the real stuff IMO, the way pros talk about it, but very often, we hobbyists are using these SAME TERMS to describe actual rhythms, like triplets.

I can see that spending to much time on this forum leads people to believe I am a hobbyist? Perhaps I've misunderstood your use of 'we.' I don't mean to be oversensitive. Probably good to get off the forum, I think.

Anyway I'm not playing at Smalls every week. There's pro and there's pro.

Everything I say on this subject, I got from musicians I respect. I can give you links if you like.

"Listen to so and so on this, laying WAYYYY back behind the beat". [Plays the video, and it's a quarter note triplet]. How frustrating is that? We're talking about 2 completely different things and using the same terms.

Wynton Marsalis uses those terms.

I suggest checking out Do The Math regularly. Learned more from there than anywhere else online.