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Sometimes by whole sections of the band - Coltrane's first record as leader... you know he worked them hard and they sound great. Listen to these section guys playing and swinging as one - the magic of the perfectly paused resumption at the 1:00 mark, much more...
Originally Posted by JCat
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03-13-2023 05:22 AM
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You make some excellent points here. I remember when I was in 3rd grade, I initially thought that learning multiplication and division was hard. Then the teacher brought out these 3-dimensional geometric shapes, squares, triangles etc., that were made of metal rods with beads on the rods, and also an abacus. Then he showed how we could move the beads around in certain ways to do addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. From that day forward it just clicked, and all those things seemed easy to me. If I had been more mature than a 3rd grader is, I would have also realized, at that moment, that I was a visual learner. I know there is some debate whether visual verses textural (written or spoken) learners is a thing. However, I've read some interesting, super intensive, research from the Behavioral Sciences division of the NIH, stating that 65% of learners are actually visual learners. By "super intensive," I mean they were putting electrodes on peoples heads to measure their brain wave activity while learning, and then giving them certain tests etc., super intensive. So that is something teachers should know about, and since visual learners comprises the majority of learners, have tools to facilitate visual learning in the classroom. Originally Posted by nevershouldhavesoldit
No joke there - we each learn in our own way. There’s no “one size fits all” in teaching, but few teachers (of anything) seem to understand this. No “method” works for everyone, despite what so many teachers believe.
I think the key to effective teaching is identifying the way(s) each student takes in and processes the most and most useful information. There are even many ways of practicing, and some are more productive than others for each of us.
It helps to set goals and establish milestones to measure progress toward those goals. But even the speed of the journey has to be appropriate for each student. Many teachers blame those who don’t seem to make “enough” progress - but the failure is often in setting inappropriate goals or sticking to a preset approach to teaching that ignores the student’s innate approach to learning.
I’ve taught biologic and physical sciences at a healthcare university for decades and been recognized by both students and colleagues for it (I reached the rank of Professor in 1993). But I’ve been a terrible music teacher whenever I've tried because I didn’t take enough time or make enough effort to understand the above for music students.
Procrustes was a terrible role model for teachers. Why so many emulate him remains a mystery to me
Also, coming from a background of professional B2B Sales, I feel that teachers are missing a golden opportunity to sell their young students on how fun learning actually is, and also selling them, when they are young, on how important their education will be to them in their futures. If you're going to teach young students, I think teaching them those two things are probably a great place to start. Ironically, visual methods are also probably among the best ways of teaching them that, too.
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Suppose you're making a fancy cake. Do you want to read a text description of how to do fancy icing or would you get more out of a video? Same argument for assembling a piece of furniture. "Insert end-pin A into the lined socket. Snap bracket D ... ". Or a video?
I think that the video would be a more efficient way for the cake and the furniture for just about everybody.
For things that require a number of sequential, easy to describe steps, maybe some people would prefer text -- if they read efficiently enough that the mechanics of reading don't interfere. Makes it easier to refer back to earlier steps.
But, now that video instruction is available for so many things, I think we'll find out that most people prefer it.
If I was doing an experiement, I think I could design it to get whatever result I wanted. I'm not convinced there are visual vs verbal learners and it's a useful distinction.
The problem I do see with early childhood education is that they teach to the leading edge of the developmental wave. So, for example, when about 20% of the kids are ready for a certain concept, like borrowing in subtraction, they teach it to everybody and let a lot of kids struggle.
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You make a lot of really excellent points. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
Yes, in many cases video learning can be an excellent, even superior method of teaching than just verbal or written texts. One HUGE thing about video learning, is that if the learner doesn't understand something, they can just rewind the video as many times as needed, until they get it through their thick noggin. They can also access it whenever and wherever it is convenient and conducive for them to study. Just think, how many students have missed a question on a test because they weren't fast enough at taking notes when the teacher was talking, or missed what teach said because the cute girl sitting next to him asked if she could borrow his pen? Is that something that's ever happened to you? LOL
Also, though video learning is a great way to do it, visual learning doesn't only have to be a video. It can also include any charts, graphs, objects that people can touch and manipulate etc. Like when my teacher brought out those 3-dimensional geometric shapes with the beads on them. There was something about being able to see mathematics demonstrated in 3 dimensions, and also something about being able to touch and manipulate them that sped up the learning process, too. There was something about having things that the student could visualize while solving math problems, above and beyond just the squiggly lines on a piece of paper.
Yes, well the student has to also learn to read and write, and follow written instructions. However, the visual learning tools can help to speed up that process as well. Like you pointed out, sometimes it's faster to just pick up the instruction manual, look at the table of contents, and read the instructions for that topic.
You wrote: "If I was doing an experiement, I think I could design it to get whatever result I wanted. I'm not convinced there are visual vs verbal learners and it's a useful distinction."
Sure, but what's the fun in that? We're talking the betterment of mankind here, and our children. It's essential to make sure that strict scientific protocols are followed to ensure non-biased, and therefore accurate and repeatable results. Whether there really are "visual learners" or not, I think we both agree on the power of video learning, so that alone gives some credence to the visual learner thing.
You wrote: "The problem I do see with early childhood education is that they teach to the leading edge of the developmental wave. So, for example, when about 20% of the kids are ready for a certain concept, like borrowing in subtraction, they teach it to everybody and let a lot of kids struggle."
Wow, if that is happening, that is not good. I would say that they should definitely not slow down the students that test well right away. Encourage the students who accel to keep doing that. Now that the computer age is here, it should be easier to identify those students and to put them in accelerated classes, where they can be challenged. It’s also important to recognize that the other 80% of students may be gifted in another academic area, or may even blossom, themselves, at a later date. Think of all the extremely successful multi-millionaires and billionaires who didn't become successful until later in life. Also, some students may be good at studying for a test, but then may not actually retain the knowledge. Where a student who doesn't take tests as well may actually retain more general knowledge better; there are other variables. So actually, teaching kids HOW to study could be a beneficial educational subject for young kids to be taught, if it’s not being taught already.
Like I said in my previous post, though, I really think teachers are missing a golden opportunity if they are not selling their young students on how fun learning actually is, and how important it is for their futures. That's true no matter what profession they eventually go into. They're young kids after all, and the teachers are adults, so they should be able to "outsmart" the kids and sway their attitudes towards learning to a positive one. C'mon, behavioral scientist's and educators, figure it out.
Which brings me to the additional point that I want to make in this discussion. There is a saying that says "success is 98% attitude and 2% aptitude?" Truer words were never spoken. All these self-help guru's out there, from Eckhart Tolle to Tony Robbins, primarily focus on improving ATTITUDES, and there is good reason for that. If you can significantly improve people's attitudes towards an endeavor, their aptitudes will significantly and automatically increase as a result. The power in that statement should not be overlooked or taken lightly.
Wow, how did we go from discussing swing feel to a discussion on early childhood education? That's quite a segue, don't you think? Great discussion on an important topic nonetheless, and I'm always up for that.
Okay, Iv'e got to include something here about music. Hmm, let's see.
Music is art. Art should be artistic, don't you think?
There is math in learning music theory, a functional math that pertains to moving musical notes and their relationships. It's about sounds, but those sounds can be derived from numbers, once the relationship between the sounds and the numbers are thoroughly enough committed to memory. Is that a controversial statement?
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I tend to disagree that swing IS a feel. I believe it is something that you can feel, sure. But IMHO it is created on purpose and as a result you can feel it. I play mainly rythm bigband guitar. And the swing mainly comes from putting the accents in the right spot. And that is independent from the time. Because time is not the same as rythm. Time is just time. Nothing more. Swing comes from the dance band era. When a band plays swing, you are tempted to start dancing or at least want to move bodyparts to the groove.
A clip that clearly explains and shows where a rythm section gets the swing from :
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All I know is that when I'm really swinging hard, I can not only hear it, I can really feel it, and it feels great. When I'm swinging hard, I feel like I'm not just playing over the cadence, I feel like I'm really locked into the music, like I'm actually part of the music, in a very organic, natural, and beautiful way. Originally Posted by hotpepper01
I Also feel that some things in music, if you have to think about them too much when you play, can start to sound too rigid, and mechanical. That kind of thing in music actually loses people. Search your feelings and you'll know it to be true. That is what playing with swing is totally about avoiding. Swing feel, is a way to sound more natural, organic, and flowing when you play. Also, jazz musicians aren't the only ones who swing. In the 1990's "New Jack Swing" was all the rage in R&B music, featuring R&B grooves with a beat that was swinging. I was listening to Mariah Carey, many moons ago, and realized that in addition to her beautiful voice and amazing range, when she was improvising with her vocals, she was swinging all over the place, on an R&B groove, beautifully. And, as I'm sure you know, sometimes in jazz we play straight eights too.
Sure, you can think of ways to quantize it in your mind, and you should, but when it comes time to actually play, it's better to just have the feel of it so ingrained in your consciousness that you don't have to think about it. You've learned it so well that you just feel it now, because it's part of you, and you are now part of the music, actually in it, not just playing over the top of it. Does that make sense?
Like Obi-Wan Kenobi was always teaching Luke, "let go and feel the force," because when you've put in enough time to master it, you don't have to think about it anymore, per se, you just feel it.
I do agree that it's good to have a concept in your consciousness of what swing feel actually is, especially in the beginning.
Hey, the Boss, she says I always have to be a nice person. I try my best, we don't have to always agree on this forum, but at least be civil. Right? Everyone is entitled to their opinion. That's all this is, my opinion. I also have a healthy sense of humor, and seem to get along best with people who have the same.
Happy to be also talking about music again.Last edited by James Haze; 03-16-2023 at 05:12 AM.
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I've watched/listened to that video quite a few times, and what I think I notice every time is that Cirillo doesn't swing at first--his initial few bars (around :40) are pretty square, but right before the piano enters, he starts to swing, and by the time the piano is all the way in, he's absolutely swinging. And I think what I'm hearing is a component of what the gypsy-jazz guys call la pompe, specifically the very slight upstroke on the ands. Marsalis' entry pushes that swing feel even harder--maybe because he floats over the beat.
I suppose there's audio-analysis software that could pinpoint exactly how each player is placing their beats, but I'm not sure that there's a way of describing beforehand how to achieve it. But players know how to find it, and the really good ones fall right into it.
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Have often thought about a thread being started here on the forum that was about teaching swing to players who have not mastered it but I am not the one to curate it.
The thread would have minimal text and entries would primarily be DAW traces showing the variations in where notes are dropped. Posts would be of short self recordings playing against a backing track with feedback or analysis from the forum.
Using words to describe swing to a beginner may be analogous to using words to describe color to a blind man. Good luck.
Another opinion I have is listening is not likely to help all that much other than for motivation. Watching Lionel Messi strike a soccer ball a thousand times is not going to give you much insight on how to do it. Why? Because it takes strength and muscle memory and there are a lot of dues that have to be paid in order to develop the area of the parietal lobe that controls your hands. Then there is the issue of latency or reaction time. In the beginning there is likely a meaningful number of milliseconds difference between when you think you are striking the note and when it actually comes out of the amplifier or sound hole. Recording with a backing track is the best way to stop kidding yourself and get your timing right.
My experience was I needed to record. Using a DAW helped steady out the variability of where you dropped your notes. The high hat makes a good reference point. Playing 3 /4 time over 2 measures of 4/4 backing track also helped a lot.
Another analogy for me is playing in an ensemble is similar to dancing. You have a partner and if you practice using a wooden chair (a metronome) Ginger Rogers is not going to ask you to dance. She’ll probably ask you to sit down.
Like the improvisation threads here, once there is some level of understanding gained, a vocabulary can be used to convey the concepts but for the beginner it’s not happening.
Show me. Record me. Record you and point out the difference.
Music and particularly swing or synchopated music has offsets between musicians and when the notes are released. If you look at the foot tapping in the video above, the players are not perfectly synchronous. One astute observer when writing about Herbie and Wayne pointed out how they drop their notes with a different offset to what could be regarded as the beat. That is their stylistic personality. Wes is often attacking the beat, KB is not, but both swing hard and sound great.
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Nah man, that's where you're wrong. You've always got to be right on time with it, ALWAYS. In actuality, what it is, is more about placing accents in certain places. Occasionally maybe placing a note behind the beat, to give it a more relaxed feel. But, even then, it's still within the beat itself. Ya gotta understand that the beat itself has a certain duration. I've never seen it actually written somewhere where that was measured or "quantized," but it's common sense. Once you grasp all that, you should be able to start getting it incorporated into your own style.
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When I have the computer play a song, everything is time-perfect. But it doesn't sound like a group of live musicians who can swing. Good live players swing harder, it seems to me. Originally Posted by James Haze
Why would that be? If I program in the right accents will it then be as good as live musicians? Or is some flexibility with time a requirement?
The Brazilian swing of samba has been studied carefully with wave forms. The result is that things are played unevenly -- and the unevenness is tempo dependent. My guess is American swing is similar -- that you can't notate it accurately because the swing eighths are different at every different tempo.Last edited by rpjazzguitar; 03-20-2023 at 02:35 PM.
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The Force is strong in this one. Originally Posted by rpjazzguitar
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Again... swing is created with triplets and sextuplets
Swing a slower tempo... play quarter note triplets on the half notes,
1..........2..........3..........4.......... , becomes
1......2......3......1......2......3....... , counted 1 2 3 2 2 3. You can see as well as feel that the 2rd and 4th beats have different attack locations. That's what creates the feel. (you can move the attacks around, push or pull, but that should be done with triple organization, not by what you had to eat etc...
Faster feel....same tempo. Like what the example above became after the awkward start of guitar
1.......2.......3.......4
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
Anyway what you do is just keep subdividing etc..
Then to create tight and in the pocket feels... you expand the rhythmic pattern from a 1 bar pattern to... 2, 4, 8 etc.... You play longer rhythmic patterns, (organized attacks and implied attacks), that imply the pulse and also create and imply longer sections of TIME or SPACE while still keeping the basic feel of what ever feel or style of swing your playing.
And yes... you do need some technique to be able to have space between attacks to help with that relaxed feel.Last edited by Reg; 03-20-2023 at 11:02 AM.
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OK. Will change my definition of beat. Your definition is more practical. My definition had it being like the goal line in football. A thin line that goes all the way around the world. A point in the DAW trace arbitrarily set as the 0 point which for me usually is where the drummer drops the high hat. You need to be on it if you don’t want to sound lame. No more than 20 milliseconds late at medium tempo. Originally Posted by James Haze
Beat is now a window, a very small one, but it has duration.
To sound good once you stake out your position in it you best maintain your territory. Roaming is not good.
Ray Brown once described his playing in football terms. If a beat is 10 yards long he wanted to hit his note 1 foot before the line. Since we are string players also, to me it sounds good to be in step with the bass player. Ray is on the beat but he is purposely not on the line.
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[QUOTE=Reg;1255052]Again... swing is created with triplets and sextuplets
Faster feel....same tempo. Like what the example above became after the awkward start of guitar
1.......2.......3.......4
1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3 1 2 3
JCat brought up the point above talking about reading lead sheets.
The written tied eighth notes are not played equal in duration.
The same is often true with the triplets you describe. They are not as straight as implied by the math.
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These thread can threaten to descend into a false dichotomy.
you can define some aspects of swing feel - the basic ones such as eighth and quarter triplets and so on (Bembe is a good one too - Bembe superimposed on 4/4 is the basis of a lot of slow-medium swing phrasing.)
But that doesn’t means it’s not also a feel. No one needs to be counting on the bandstand. But that doesn’t mean it can’t start with counting in the practice room.
Microrhythmic flavours - such as playing ahead and behind, the specifics of swing feel beyond the triplet (or Samba swing) and so on, are probably best learned by feel and ear though (although I quite like the rhythm morphing concept). But this is lot an excuse to simply play out of time, or not work on the basics!Last edited by Christian Miller; 03-23-2023 at 05:50 AM.
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Yea... Rays great etc...
Generally we in the rhythm section create the time and feel. Jazz notation is really short hand notation. We as jazz players know what swing feel is implied in different settings etc...
Triplets feels for swing and straight feels for most others.
Swing or Straight. Swing implies triplets. Straight implies duple feel or... Straight Eights when subdividing.
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OP is gone, but yes you can ballpark swing feel with terminology. Imo it's: Originally Posted by OP foo
1. Pulse: usually the drum pattern or walking bass line.
2. The jazz ed uneven 8ths thing, yes, but not only that.
3. Further rational flux / rhythmic subdivision in the ensemble or solo performance.
Swing isn't a single one of these characteristics, it requires all 3 because it’s an interaction. That’s why no single notation symbol can encode it, but doesn't make it ineffable either.
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What do you think? does this tune and performance proper swing to you? no edits, no cliks, no loops... just internal clock, 5/4 beat and lets go!
What I mean by this is 2 things, first one, very important to develop internal clock, to me was harder to record with no loops on cans or a percu player but we all should be able to do that and second thing is that swing by yourself playing solo is one thing, really hard and important bu when you play with a good drummer be able to lock in the groove...pocket... with him/her is the holy grail IMO. Considering that, Wes swing has nothing to do with Scofield or Hall, Parker has nothing to do with Peterson...etc...right?
Last edited by Basshead; 01-22-2026 at 12:00 PM.
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Like I said.... Jazz Notation is short hand. One could notate the differences between swing and straight Time... but what would be the point. No one could really sight read the notation... well maybe really monster studio payers.
But just as chords, harmony or changes etc...are never fully notated, it doesn't need to be...because we as jazz player understand what is implied. We recognize from the context what harmony, and chord patterns are implied.
We also know what subdivisions are implied rhythmically... straight or swing.
Hey Basshead... beautiful playing, love it.... but its straight time.
The whole "feel thing" is just talk.... As a kid I had lessons with Alan Dawson while at Berklee and other drummers... I was taught Time and rhythmic organization within space. Not just what's played... also what is implied...
Yea you generally have internal time... or are a time follower. Not bad or good....just different.
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I was under the impression that the exact duration of swung 8ths is tempo dependent. As tempo rises they get more even.
If that's true, the notation would be different at different tempos.
Which is why feeling it is so essential.
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Hey Reg to me thats not straight time, it has a swing feel, straight would be like some rock/metal bands of today or some quantize feel insta players that sound too rigid to me, I think swing feel is more even that we think and the whole half time feel Hal Galper thing makes more sense to me now than ever.
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Yeah it's an interesting one. It does have a swing to it, but I think jazzers would categorise it as a 'straight 8s groove feel.' Originally Posted by Basshead
OTOH I always feel bebop has quite a lot to do with a funk 16th feel. You just double the ground pulse. Funk isn't quantised either.
Of course it turns out quite a lot of those insta players are quite literally quantised haha.
Defining swing is a bit of a fool's errand, but one I heard attributed to Louis Armstrong's is useful - "Swing is putting the notes in the right place."
One thing that is absolutely foundational for learners is accurately locating the swing upbeats at a given tempo. Which is obvious really. Whatever you play, you need to be precise and energised in the execution of your accents. Downbeat accents need to be played exactly, not behind, and upbeats need to be precisely wherever the band is feeling that upbeat.
The slightly Zen thing is that articulation needs to be dialled into your technique, strongly audiated in your mind's ear, but also executed in a relaxed way. As I'm sure you know from your own playing, you can't over-do it, because you end up rushing.
But not all notes are accents.
When practicing your 8th note runs, a lot of guitarists practice 'horn tonguing' where you pick the upbeat notes and slur the downbeats. This isn't a hard fast rule (it depends on the accentuation) it does help a lot. In this case the 8th note evens out but the picking all happens on the swing upbeats, so you end up with a straight and late feel which feels 'in the pocket'. It's an important skill to nail for the aspiring jazz guitarist even if it's very far from the whole story. But if you work on this stuff with students you see a marked improvement pretty quickly in my experience. It gets them out of overdoing the swing eighth.
Transcribing Kurt Rosenwinkel recently, it's interesting how much he sticks to this (he plays a lot of slurs). He often changes strings on the upbeat in chromatic runs etc.Last edited by Christian Miller; 01-22-2026 at 07:09 PM.
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Transcribing Kurt Rosenwinkel might be confusing, he uses a sample delay to get that violin effect but lets say, who has more swing feel? Satriani or Vai? Holdsworth or Grant Green? to me the answer is obvious, Satch and Green but maybe for the straight ahead musician only Green counts and the rest cant swing at all, I cant agree, if you can groove by your self and it does not sound like a boring drum machine then there is some kind of swing in there, it has to be NO SYMMETRIC IMO.
I think Hendrix, SRV, BB King, Johnny Winter, Marcus King, EVH, Jeff Beck, ...they all got amazing swing feel, there are some others that really goes with the song, Lukather has an amazing swing feel in some TOTO tunes, same with Scofield and Metheny, it depends on the type of repertory, McLaughlin...actually John is an extreme example to me, I love his playing with Shakti, Paco and Free Spirits and absolutely dislike when he goes more fusion rock... two different opposite personas to me.
Someone said once...if aint swinging aint right...and someone replied...if the groove is right...sounds right, I agree with both if that make sense.
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He does use that effect at present. I don't think it delays his onset much. Obviously there are examples of him playing with a more traditional jazz tone. He's not as legato here: Originally Posted by Basshead
In any case, Kurt's articulation is correct for jazz. I'm not going to argue he swings more than Grant Green on, say, Miss Anne's Tempo because that would be stupid.
Holdsworth's swing feel is a sleeper because most of his music was straight eights and so often he's playing shorter note divisions. But I think he was able to swing... Check out this at 1:15. He only does it for five bars tho haha.Satriani or Vai? Holdsworth or Grant Green?
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