Swing beat

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I've read technical explanations, but I can't really put my finger on exactly what a swing beat sounds like. Can someone give some examples? Is the rhythm in "The Boys Are Back in Town" swung?

― Nigel (Nigel), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 21:50 (twenty years ago)

chuck eddy to thread

― Shakey Mo Collier (Shakey Mo Collier), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 22:03 (twenty years ago)

"The Boys Are Back in Town" is indeed in a swing rhythm. Think of the fast notes in the main guitar riff - those are triplets. That's the defining characteristic - "compound meter" (duple meter w/ triplet beat subdivisions).

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 22:56 (twenty years ago)

spang, spang-a-lang

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 22:56 (twenty years ago)

dog, walk the dog, walk the dog

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 22:57 (twenty years ago)

I had a drum teacher who used to say it as "Movinandagrovinandamovin andagrovinanda"

Boys Are Back In Town is swung, but it's a pretty stiff swing. That's the thing though, there are a variety of ways to phrase "swung" eighth notes. Usually they're somewhere between the first and third notes of a triplet and a dotted eigth-sixteenth.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:00 (twenty years ago)

Is it "stiff" or are you just perceiving it that way because of the quick tempo?

― Tim Ellison (Tim Ellison), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:05 (twenty years ago)

I don't really know the tune, but in general, the faster the tempo the more the swing gets flattened out.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:08 (twenty years ago)

Yeah, 8th-note triplets is the easiest way to think of swing, but it's an approximation -- basically an attempt to subject nonwestern beats to western notation. If you literally just play 8th-note triplets you end up sounding stiff and mechanical (think schaffle), which kind of violates the spirit of swing. It's much more a feel than something you can notate, and you can swing just slightly -- dragging the beat a little -- or you can swing widely. The whole point is to open up the beat and let it sway.

I don't really know the tune, but in general, the faster the tempo the more the swing gets flattened out.

Not really. There's tons of fast jazz that still swings like crazy.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:10 (twenty years ago)

True, but it tends to be more a matter of how it's accented at fast tempos. If you listen to Tony Williams playing the ride on a really fast tune, it sounds more like he's playing quarter-eighth-eighth than swung eighths, but he accents it in a way that it still swings.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:11 (twenty years ago)

Well yeah, again, it's more a feel than anything else, which is why it's hard represent mathematically. I like to think of it as exposing some of the dark matter in the beat, showing how much space there really is there and how many different things you can do with it.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:15 (twenty years ago)

It still swings, yeah, but I think there's a lot more implication going on. There's just not as much space between notes to put things in (and conversely, the slower the tempo the more room there is to put things inbetween the cracks, know what I mean?).

xpost

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:23 (twenty years ago)

Any rock-song examples? Have we come to a verdict on "The Boys Are Back in Town"?

― Nigel (Nigel), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:26 (twenty years ago)

"The Boys Are Back in Town" is basically a blues boogie -- muscular and not nearly as fluid as swing jazz, but it is a "swung" beat. (And of course in jazz there's a big difference between, like, Duke Ellington swing and bop swing. There's lots of different kinds of swing.)

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Tuesday, 27 December 2005 23:30 (twenty years ago)

| |--| | |--|
X X. X X X. X

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 00:06 (twenty years ago)

Well that didn't come out the way it should have.

― Whiney G. Weingarten (whineyg), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 00:06 (twenty years ago)

Haha, I was wondering how I was supposed to read that.

Any rock-song examples?

"Spirit in the Sky" has the boogie-shuffle beat. "Reelin' in the Years" kinda does but makes a lot of use of the whole triplet, which throws off the "swingness" of it a little.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 01:08 (twenty years ago)

"Roadhouse Blues," "Tush," a lot of '70s boogie-rock.

― gypsy mothra (gypsy mothra), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 01:15 (twenty years ago)

It was Tim I think who pointed out on another thread that "Blank Generation" has a swing beat.

― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 15:53 (twenty years ago)

If you literally just play 8th-note triplets you end up sounding stiff and mechanical
One time I programmed an old drum machine to do this for a rehearsal with a piano player I knew. After a few bars of that, I wanted to throw the drum machine out the window and shoot the piano player.

― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 16:03 (twenty years ago)

A jazz band teacher of mine told me that he and some other music and computer academics had actually done a massive project to try to get a computer to "swing" properly, and that they were unable to do it.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 16:21 (twenty years ago)

There was a link on another thread to a discussion on another message board about somebody, Joe Henderson maybe, playing a solo in straight eigths but making it swing.

Then of course there is the simple issue of playing a walking bassline in quarter notes and making it swing.

― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 16:35 (twenty years ago)

True, and that's more evidence that there must be something infinitessimally subtle about what makes certain things "swing" in jazz.

― Abbadavid Berman (Hurting), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 16:38 (twenty years ago)

Of course, this topic is mentioned on this thread.

― Redd Harvest (Ken L), Wednesday, 28 December 2005 18:28 (twenty years ago)

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