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Funny video right?
Last edited by Basshead; 01-25-2026 at 11:54 AM.
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01-25-2026 10:46 AM
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Ok I'm trying to figure out what Ray is saying and what Guy has quoted.
Does this mean that a jazz downbeat on a quarter note should have the duration of the first two-thirds of a triplet and that a jazz upbeat should last only as long as the last third of a triplet?
When I watched Ray's video, he played an example of Coltrane playing some eighth notes, and Ray remarked at how long the downbeats were. I slowed down Trane's playing, tapped triplets with my fingers, and found the downbeat and the upbeat had that duration i mentioned above (two-thirds of a triplet, then last third of the triplet).
Did I get it right?
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"How close can you get that upbeat note to the next downbeat without actually putting it on the downbeat?"
Originally Posted by brent.h
Info: It's Cannonball Adderley's solo on "So What" at about 5:25 on the "Kind of Blue" recording.
According to Ray Smith, Swing has only two type of notes: "On the beat" or "Almost on the following beat"
Last edited by GuyBoden; 01-25-2026 at 02:20 PM. Reason: Swing has only two type of notes: "On the beat" or "Almost on the following beat"
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Ray's point, as I tried to demonstrate in my post, is that often the upbeat is so late that it's either a grace note or basically non-existent. I used a text example to hopefully make things clearer. Short words like most prepositions and personal pronouns are often shifted to the downbeat so the result may be closer to the reverse of what you describe, i.e. first third of a triplet followed by two thirds. Originally Posted by brent.h
Once you hear that, it's all over the phrasing of players who possess what I consider a rhythmically deep swing feel. For instance, Bobby Broom, Peter Bernstein and Jesse van Ruller are three guitarists on the current scene who phrase in that fashion. It's absent in the output of many prominent jazz guitarists today (even a number of those ironically playing in a revivalist 'swing' style).
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I’m gonna need some A/B audio examples of what you mean. I think I know what you mean but I’m not sure Originally Posted by PMB
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Yeah, that was enjoyable. DJG pointed out that downbeats are usually long notes and upbeats are usually played staccato in jazz. Originally Posted by GuyBoden
I think what he's talking about I would understand slightly differently conceptually. But I'll have another few listens and comment. At a first listening, the issues he identifies as being to do with quarter note feel are to me all connected with the correct understanding of the position of the upbeat. To my ears, the trumpets sound a little out of the pocket because their upbeats are not locked in, for instance.
Which is not to say I think his way of looking at it is wrong. In fact it may be more pedagogically useful, after all he is a very experienced teacher. It is important to lock in with the beat as well as the upbeat. It really depends on the nature of the rhythmic figure you are playing.
One thing that's slippery about rhythm is that what is the reality of what we can see on a DAW timeline doesn't necessarily relate to our psycoogical perception of how it feels when we play the thing. The latter is certainly more important.
The operative thing for me is that most students don't have a good awareness of where the upbeat is compared to the downbeat. You might start with a simple figure like Charleston and ensure that the 'and' is placed as close to the beat as you can get it without being on the beat. Playing a simple swing jump jive upbeat rhythm part is helpful to.
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One thing that I get from So What is the rhythmic code shifting Paul Chambers does in the track
He goes from playing the head melody - which was an upbeat accent 8th feel, so straight and late in a way that locks with the upbeat - and when he shifts to playing quarter note time when he locks in, and even pushes slightly (Jimmy Cobb tended to push his quarters a touch, at least according to Billy Hart.)
https://youtu.be/ylXk1LBvIqU?si=zhWYEAvHkn4dt0r1
At 0:30 onwards
Anyway all of this makes it sound like I think I have it dialled in - which I really don't. There's a difference between being able to hear this stuff, know when it's right and wrong, and being able to play it....
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A full on week ahead of teaching, admin and gigs (it's the beginning of the academic year here) so I'll see how I go. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Suge Knight said something interesting. He said he didn't want to comment on something if he wasn't in the room at the time. Originally Posted by Reg
I didn't know who Hiroshi Yamamoto was when he stopped by the club one night with his wife. He was the leader of the Ichwa Kai. Calvin Baugh was there. He passed away in 2008 and there's a Calvin Baugh Day in San Diego now.
Our drummer was there. I won't mention his name. His father asked me to look out for him.
I don't remember two bandmates being there. I knew something was wrong as soon as we got there and I became a dictator. Yamamoto finally spoke after a while and said two words. I don't think anyone else heard him.
Then he got up and left the club with his wife.
I hadn't slept for 3 months straight leading up to that.
I know all about what happened in Osaka that year. 1985. Especially Sept. The Plaza Accords were signed in NYC at the Plaza Hotel. I'm not sure when we started playing exactly. Maybe late Sept.
I know about federal agents arresting members of the Yamaguchi Gumi in Hawaii in a drugs for arms deal. When Michael Jackson's name came up in court in brought the whole yakuza out into the daylight.
Their days were numbered. After Yamamoto retired in 1989, stiff anti-gang ordinances were instituted in Japan and the yakuza was basically finished.
Authorities keep some around because people of Korean ancestry are hated in Japan.
I think that covers everything. Do I get a report card? San Diego prides itself on not being LA.
Give me an F. It won't hurt my feelings.
Michael Jackson? Seriously?
I wore the bot out yesterday. It was begging for mercy. I wanted to know everything about a certain game developer;
Toshihiro Nagoshi - Wikipedia
He was 19 years old and coming of age in the Kansai region in 1985. There was no 'golden age' in Osaka in the 80's. Osaka wasn't quite as shutdown as portrayed in the media.
It still seemed fairly quiet. The club was lively.
We can't have nice things like gigs so you know how that goes. Just put on some gangster rap.
What now? Like Dylan said, the times they are a changing. I have JGO-Youtube addiction. I'm trying to get my 70's mojo back on guitar. I take decades off.
Then I'm going to create mayhem in California. I don't even have an agenda. Just F up everything like I did the last time.
I'm from Buffalo.
The Bills owner's wife Kim is incapacitated. People are no damn good. He's got things on his mind.
So much winning.
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For now, I'm taking Ray Smith's advice, Swing only has two type of notes: 'On the Downbeat' and 'almost on the following Downbeat.'
Ultimately, Swing is a feel thing, everyone should be locked in together.
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Just curious, for you guys, what is this? proper swing, real swing, no swing at all, just groovy swing, a piece of shit, straight feel or Latin feel?
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Play us a bit of Stompin' at the Savoy with that concept... Originally Posted by GuyBoden
For now, I'm taking Ray Smith's advice, Swing only has two type of notes: 'On the Downbeat' and 'almost on the following Downbeat.'
Ultimately, Swing is a feel thing, everyone should be locked in together.
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So I've been playing around with this today. I've kind of avoided heavy dot swing in my eights for a while now, so it was fun to lock in my quarters at medium tempo more and find that it doesn't sound corny at all.
I think the usual mistake people make with swing feel is playing an inequality but not placing the upbeat late enough and accenting the downbeat. So it comes back to finding the position of the 'ands'. Which Ray here is couching in his own terms, but any good jazz educator would emphasise the importance of finding.
The 'almost downbeat' thing does put me in mind of the way that Mike Longo handled counting in his teaching. Take this rhythm:
So here we interpret this push rhythm as a push of the 1st beat. This is generally the way I conceptualise this structural upbeats.
He counts eight note lines traditionally. So if you have a string of 8ths with a push at the end, you actually get this:
So yeah, I like this way of looking at it, and I can use it in my own teaching. I teach this thing to kids:
So we'd count 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 | 1 2 3 4 1 |---for the first line haha.
Most of them get the swung eights but play the tied push early. I have to coach them to get it more in the pocket. But it's something you can start pretty early on in the learning process.
It's a problem with notation not reflecting the actual music, as others have mentioned. So we used number of notational conventions that aren't obvious to non jazz players to represent jazz rhythms. Ray is obviously a big band leader and is dealing with horns that need to interpret notation. But, if you transcribe a lot and play with recordings - or of course with experienced professional section players in a big band etc - you are going to find things out about the placement of those pushes if you are paying attention.
I found this a few years back with NYJO. Some of the junior groups were learning by ear (which was quite new at the time) and the older groups were playing from charts. Guess who swung more?
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This is much better: Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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This is fun - listen to how late the pushes are here.
Kind of demonstrates the guy's point better than anything I can think of.
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No one cares about San Diego. Lol. If it didn't happen in LA, it never happened. Originally Posted by Reg
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Yes, very good, that's a classic example. I love that version of the song. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
(A great song, that is played badly by many amateurs like myself.)
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Hey Basshead... again you sound great. Some cool bluesy lick etc....I liked...But pretty straight time or Feel. Not Bad or wrong etc...
Now try playing part of that with triplet feel .
Start with slow tempo... with attacks on 1 and 3 of triplet. And if you want a deeper jazz swing... Sub-divide. Make each note of a triplet...two 16's... a sextuplet.
Guy..."On the Downbeat' and 'almost on the following Downbeat". Man... that will keep one searching for the pocket.
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Great example, but how did they “recore” it? Originally Posted by GuyBoden
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Eh? there's a drummer. Originally Posted by Mick-7
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I don't know what this is. It sounds nice. It tells people that you are a good guitar player. Originally Posted by Basshead
Have you found any jazz musicians to play with yet? You should jam with them on some standards.
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I doubt that it is possible to teach good swing feel using words.
I assume that playing it as triplets will work, but only at one tempo. That might be an interesting experiment. Put it into notation software as a triplet and vary the tempo to find the exact bpm where it sounds swinging-est. If that's possible to determine.
As the tempo rises the note placement becomes more even. I'm not sure what happens when the tempo slows - maybe that last triplet note becomes more like a grace note?
Another thought experiment: Suppose you want an app which will listen to you play and flash a color. Green for when it's swinging, yellow marginal and red for not-swinging. That would require some kind of process which can determine which is which. What would that look like? It's the kind of thing AI could figure out, if you could agree on what to feed it. I'm not sure that everybody would agree which music should be which color.
If you had such an app, you could practice keeping it in the green.
The only practical observation I can make is that I've noticed that I swing better when I focus on swinging. If I let my attention to swing lapse, my swinging goes yellow or red.
Oh, and check out Reg's videos. His stuff is always in the green, IMO. Reg523 on youtube.
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And in any case Maestro Green keeps them “down to earth”. Without his steady quarter notes those pushes wouldn’t amount to much. Originally Posted by Christian Miller
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Always think it's cool that the guy responsible for the Basie Band swinging so hard is doing so by not swinging. Originally Posted by pcjazz
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To me swing means groovy, doesnt have to be that triplet feel, actually I think thats kinda of a myth and if you play like that all the time sounds simmetric and boring anyway, it has to have some groove, some variations, some force going and some loose, sometimes on top, sometimes behind...you know...
does this shit swing? Instagram
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