[Harp-L] Re: Swing

[Ken Deifik <kenneth.d@xxxxxxxxxxxx>]

> Listening to the ideas on swing being sometimes ahead of the beat was 
> interesting to me. ... I want to solidify my ability to explain 
> swing.  Any suggestions?  I would like to see a book supplemented by audio 
> that times out swing rhythms.

I'm not going to be totally helpful here, but I have many notions about 
swing, and maybe some will be of use to you.

First, swing is not a rhythm or rhythms, it's a quality of rhythms.

The quality, to me anyway, is the result of micro syncopations and 
anticipations.

In what you might call macro syncopations, for instance, you might set up 
an expectation for the 1 of the next beat to be expressed with a note, but 
then you don't hit that note until the 1 and an eighth.  It's a wonderful 
surprise.  Same with an anticipation, a note hit before the place where you 
expect to hear it.

Swing is built up using both anticipations and syncopations that occur at a 
much more granular level, such as 64ths and 128ths and even much more 
intuitive fractions of beats.  These little displacements, working together 
(and almost never alone), wind up creating the feeling of swing - not that 
these words can even begin to give you the feeling of what I am talking about.

I had a friend who went to Berklee who told me that one of the drummers in 
his dorm could write out the count of a ball bouncing down the stairs.  He 
said that guy had actually developed some kind of system that explained 
swing in terms of 128th notes.

I didn't buy it for a second.  That is because every good musician develops 
their own sense of how to swing a melody or rhythm.

I have always believed that it's called swing because the sensation is of 
being picked up like a sack of potatoes and swung into the next phrase - 
there's a sense of phrase-by-phrase inevitability that makes an entire 
piece hang together as a wonderfully whole statement if it swings well.

Also, when music swings well it makes your back dip and your shoulders 
swing back and forth.

When Jazz critics write that Jazz in the 20's didn't swing should look for 
other lines of work.  It swung insanely, and in many different ways.  Much 
of Jazz in the 20's had a 2/4 feel instead of a 4/4 feel.    That instantly 
requires that you use those micro displacements somewhat 
differently.  There are endless feelings that feel like swing.

In any event, most American dance band music has had a 4/4 feel since the 
late 20's.  Now, almost all music that you hear in 4/4 will place emphasis 
on the 1 and the 3 or the 2 and the 4.  And wherever the emphasis goes, 
that's where musicians will place those swing displacements.

So we have the famous analysis of Count Basie, who played with the Blue 
Devils, a band that swung on the 1 and the 3, and the Bennie Moten band, 
which swung on the 2 and the 4.  And when Basie assembled his own band, he 
got guys from both bands and easily developed a way to swing all four beats 
of the bar, and though that band wasn't the first to swing all four beats, 
the art of doing so was raised to the sky with the Basie band.

(One of the coolest ways to bring a sense of wider dimensions to your music 
is to emphasize the 1 and the 3 in the verses and 2 and 4 in the choruses, 
or vice versa.  The Band did this on many of their recordings, and it's 
magical.  Ain't good for dancing, but great for listening.)

I consider swing to be musical sex.  When a band really swings a groove 
your IQ goes down because you're drawn into the great feeling and you 
forget about the unpaid bills.  I have no scientific evidence of this, but 
I have forgotten about alot of unpaid bills while enjoying swinging music.

So while I'm composing a harp solo or a guitar part, I often find the notes 
I want to play before I've found the right way to swing those notes.  But 
now I'm on the hunt.  I play the phrase over and over, varying this that 
and the other over and over, hopefully getting to a place where I forget 
I'm doing it.  (I'll often watch TV whilst composing, with the sound off, 
so as to take my mind off the music.)  And then suddenly the right system 
of displacements show up and the phrase or whatever swings.  After I hear 
it once, I never have to write anything down or even record it into my 
digital voice recorder, because suddenly the phrase has come to life.

And here's where you'll really want to throw me off the roof: there is no 
system for this.  Your instructors are kind of correct, you develop 
instincts about swinging the notes.  Worse, not all those instincts are 
going to always serve you well, but when they do the audience responds 
instantly.  (Leave the stuff that doesn't really swing off the 
record.  That's why there's editing.)

Listen to Basie, listen to the Meters, to Milton Brown and the Brownies, to 
all the instruments on Juke, not just Little Walter.  Then practice trying 
to get an engaging swing on a tune you play well.  That's what I said - 
'practice trying'.  It isn't mystical or anything, it's just that it's 
about musical feeling and people who purport to being able show a direct 
path to achieving a musical feeling are not being honest.  The more 
conscious you are of how the music you are listening to is swinging 
(pending that it is swinging at all) the better you will get at swinging 
your own music, and once you're on that road, Doc, it gets better and better.

When you hear a phrase that makes you move your shoulders back and forth 
whilst moving other parts of your body, try and play the phrase the same 
way.  You won't be able to intellectually analyse it and do it - the idea 
is to feel it and see if you can map the feeling to your own playing.

I can bloviate on swing endlessly, so if you want me to focus on one or 
another point I've made, ask away.

Ken