Richard Dress - Posted - 01/09/2012:  08:09:56

Here is one of my favorite vocalists, Chief Powhatan.  My question is mostly about swing.  The music has lots of bounce, maybe syncopation, but it has an emphasis every 2 measures.  Would you call that swing?

Next is another great duet, Jim & Jesse, singing the same song.  It is also bouncy, but its emphasis is every measure.  Is that swing?

The emphasis makes a big difference in the rhythm, so is there a special musical thing going on here that has an official name?

mikey5string - Posted - 01/09/2012:  08:24:18

really?

you know this topic will not generate a specific answer that suits you. or anyone for that matter.

banjohangout.org/topic/192505

seems this is one of those "rile em up" topics. one that really has not concrete answer that will satisfy completely.

bounce & swing, in the bluegrass context are basically used to mean the same thing.

kmwaters - Posted - 01/09/2012:  08:50:32

Two good renditions.  Jim and Jesse had super smooth vocals.  But I always wished they had a little more banjo solos in their songs.

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/09/2012:  08:55:03

Mikey, you are trying to be rude.  I am not setting anybody up.  I want to learn something.  You should do that more yourself.  Anyone who says bounce and swing are the same is trying to start a meaningless side-issue. Swing and bounce are not the same at all, and I don't really want to talk about it in this thread.  I want to see what people say about the difference in the two examples:  what is this emphasis thing?  Is it swing?

Forget about discussing bounce; I already know about bounce.

Edited by - Richard Dress on 01/09/2012 08:57:43

stanleytone - Posted - 01/09/2012:  09:14:50

well the most noticeable thing is the absence of the banjo in  jim and jesse's version, which gives it a different feel altogether.

it almost seems like j and jversion emphasizes the 2,3 and 4 beats like this:

one- TWO - THREE - FOUR, one - TWO - THREE - FOUR

dont know what you call it.almost sounds l;ike your trying to get waltz time out of a 4 beat measure!

by the way I LOVE chief Powhatan! one of the very first recordings i ever had was of his band. a local traditional favorite in eastern virginia

Edited by - stanleytone on 01/09/2012 09:23:15

Old Hickory - Posted - 01/09/2012:  11:42:56

The first one strikes me as bouncy. The second one as straight but smooth. I have no idea what to call it. I don't hear much if any syncopation in either.

dougyoung - Posted - 01/09/2012:  11:51:57

I've been doing swing dancing for the last 10 years (lindy hop and east coast swing) mostly to music from the 40s. I wouldn't call either one of them swing. Guess it depends on your definition of "swing". But I do know one thing - it don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing!

Brooklynbanjoboy - Posted - 01/09/2012:  11:53:12

I personally don’t think it hurts to go back over already covered ground from time to time.  And as a veteran of three decades in federal service, I certainly believe that repeating oneself is a legitimate way of communicating.

I think Richard asks good, tough and, yes, sometimes controversial questions of BHO, and that these questions get us thinking.  Yeah, sometimes he leads with his chin, but when I lived in northern VA, I never failed to learn something about banjo playing by just watching him play, and asking simple questions about his approach. 

We ought not to mind thinking several times about the same topic because in the end it is banjo stuff and none of us can ever get enough of it, either the music or talking about the music.

So, I’m willing to subscribe to this thread, and see what comes of it.  I might stand a chance of learning something after hearing it again, and if I fail to learn something this time at least I’ll be in shape for the next time this comes up.

(And thanks for the link to the older conversation.  It was good to refresh my memory before plunging into whatever comes of this one)

Anyway, my question is: does the bass line give us a hint about the quality or character of bounce in a tune?

V/R,

Lew

Carlos Benavides - Posted - 01/09/2012:  12:18:43

Agreed. The big questions never get old, and worthy of continued asking and reinterpretation.

On listening, perhaps both have bounce, but certainly the first one much more so. I think it's true that other elements contribute a lot to the overall feel, and often times in this style of music it's the bass that defines a lot of the overall level of bounce.

But to me, neither of these tunes swing. As I said above, and what characterizes swing for me, would be the manner in which a drummer uses a high-hat & snare in jazz which instantly says "this is swing". Of course, there's no drummer in Gypsy Jazz yet that music swings like a pre-schooler on a sugar high. Still it's the implied and missing drummer that I hear in my head when I think of music swinging. This goes for music in a variety of styles outside of jazz.

For me swing has a lot to do with drive, another controversial term worth revisiting.

Edited by - Carlos Benavides on 01/09/2012 12:28:41

Ron Barnes - Posted - 01/09/2012:  13:35:14

Here's an experiment. Try playing "Minor Swing" or some other tune recognized as swing, and play it  with bounce.You might notice a slight emphasis conflict or maybe not.

Ron

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/09/2012:  13:58:49

In my question bounce doesn't count, because both examples are bouncy.  We can eliminate bounce as a factor.  

The emphasis is different to my ear.  I hear an emphasized beat every two measures on the Chief Powhatan version and an emphasized beat every measure in the Jim & Jesse version.  But I don't trust my ear that much.  

When I think of swing I think of the bluegrass versions of San Antonio Rose and to my ear the emphasis there is also one per measure.  So I'm thinking that Jim & Jesse version has some swing in the BG sense.

Here's Eddie Adcock playing San Antonio Rose:

chief3 - Posted - 01/09/2012:  16:09:36

To my ear, the first one has more emphasis on the first beat in the measure ( 1_ 2 3 4). In the J&J version the 1st beat and 3rd beats are equally ( 1 2 3 4) emphasised and, IMO, is punchier and more driving without a "gallopy" feel.

chief3 - Posted - 01/09/2012:  16:12:02

Eddie Adcock is playing similar to the J&J version, with drive IMO.

Jody Hughes - Posted - 01/09/2012:  17:47:50

I don't hear swing in either of these two versions.

pearcemusic - Posted - 01/09/2012:  19:45:11

like Jody, I hear "bounce" in those 2 mp3s, but not swing.

JUST my opinion ... but usually swing comes with a 4 beat feel. Both of these versions feel like 2 beat emphasis (a "down" beat and "up" beat feel). One way to define it (IMO) is with the presence or absence of a walking or pulsing bass line ... or a 4 beat guitar rhythm like you hear in Django recordings.

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/10/2012:  06:17:54

Thanks for your responses.

OK.  No swing.  What am I hearing then?  The emphasis on the downbeat:  the first example has it every two measures.  What is that?

Also, the Adcock example on San Antonio Rose, that does sound like swing to me.  Isn't it a swingy Bob Wills tune?

Fathand - Posted - 01/10/2012:  06:25:51

In the 2 versions of Listening, I hear a little bounce in the first version, less in the 2nd (some in the Mandolin part).  I hear some more bounce in the San Antonio song mostly in the banjo solo. I do not hear much swing in any of these to my ear even though San Antonio is officially a "Western Swing" tune. 

I think there is a difference to Western Swing and the kind of swing used in the recent Swing dancing fad which I would call jazz swing for lack of a better term. When I think of Swing my brain conjures up In the Mood or Sing Sing Sing or Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. These all seem to have an empasis on the off beat 2 & 4 that I don't hear as prevalent in the samples at the top of the page in which I hear the emphasis on the on beats 1&3 .

From Greylock to Bean Blossom - Posted - 01/10/2012:  07:12:45

Richard,

It was with great interest that I read of and think of your account of how you improved as a player by immersing yourself in listening and (correct me if I am wrong) learning to feel and let your body respond to the music. I took this to mean that you were able to incorporate the sense of rhythm/timing intrinsically and then to let it come back out to the banjo. This may be incorrect or I may not have stated it well. But if this is so then my question to you is how did your body react differently to these three samples. I know my reaction was different.

Thanks,

Ken

ps I hadn't heard Chief Powhatan before and he is good.

Edited by - From Greylock to Bean Blossom on 01/10/2012 07:16:11

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/10/2012:  08:25:27

That's a good question, Ken, and it might tease out the real musicians on the HO who actually know the answers to these questions that puzzle the rest of us.

I synch with a new rhythm by swaying back and forth to match the song's key rhythm cycle while keeping the beat with my foot.  This takes all my attention so I can't really count the measures at the same time.  I can tell that the emphasis in the first example has twice the period of the second example, my guess on the number of measure is 'iffy'.  (Don't laugh, I am an engineer not a trained musician and I have to figure this stuff out on my own.)

From the gist of what I am hearing, it seems that swing is something that happens with one measure and not with multiple measures.

Here's another Chief Powhatan song for you:

Edited by - Richard Dress on 01/10/2012 08:37:33

Chief Powhatan

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/10/2012:  08:48:30

As an aside, rhythm has to come from somewhere.  It's not magic.  People with a sense of rhythm can make music.  Some of us were born without a sense of rhythm and reached adulthood that way.  It's clear that you have to have the rhythm inside you before you can put it into your music.  If you don't have it, you have to take active measure to fix the problem if you want to play music.  Many banjo players are so rhythmless that they don't even notice their lack of rhythm.  These are all unpleasant truths.  It may distress a lot of pickers but it can't be denied.

Any banjo student has to understand this and make plans to address this issue.  Plan to spend as much time working on this as working on learning banjo technique.  If you can't play music, why waste your time learning banjo technique?

Edited by - Richard Dress on 01/10/2012 08:50:19

Gymbal31 - Posted - 01/10/2012:  08:53:11

Isn't this more of a music theory topic than a playing advice topic?

Just wondering.

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/10/2012:  08:55:16

This thread is about actually playing Scruggs Style.  Not theory.

Carlos Benavides - Posted - 01/10/2012:  09:27:07

I'm going to throw in a little bait . . . see what happens.

Underneath the swing rhythm is a triplet structure (12 notes per measure, which are tied to make 8 notes per measure). Scruggs-style banjo rolls are based on duples (eight notes per measure, that are sometimes made to bounce by adding a dotted-eighth note). These two scenarios are similar but DIFFERENT. In this sense bluegrass never swings, unless you change your playing to triplets.

What do y'all think?

lazyarcher - Posted - 01/10/2012:  12:09:47

Try this for a definition

A Definition of Swing Music

To start with, swing is found in the rhythm section. The melody and soloists are allowed to take liberties with the rhythms and phrase their melody as they see fit. (They don t always do that but you can find enough exceptions to make your point). Dancers do the same thing. So forget what the melody does.

Not all swing music is written in 4/4 time, much of it is written in 2/2 time, sometimes 6/8 or 12/8, so forget about triplets, straight eights, etc. for now. Sometimes a particular song can be found in 4/4 time in one book and 2/2 time in another. Especially faster songs. I will try to get it across without using time signatures. For the people who know what swing is, but have come up with different numbers, we are sometimes talking about the same thing but using different time bases.

Forget about specific components of the rhythm section such as the ride cymbal, snare, hihat etc. the swing thing is a whole rhythm section approach. Sometimes different instruments (all working together) additively make the swing rhythm. Also, the swing notes are not the only ones played, other notes are added that either compliment or contrast the swing feel.

If this crazy on-line medium was equipped for sound, I could demonstrate this swing thing without any misunderstanding, but it is not so I will do the best I can. My Harpers Dictionary of Music is no help here, it defines swing as: A style of jazz popular in the 1930 s so named by Duke Ellington.

I have done more research, I have listened to scores of swing records, I have analyzed a few commercial MIDI sequences I have purchased over the years, I have discussed this with a few other professional musicians, and I have analyzed the swing feel feature of a couple of drum machines and professional sequencing packages. The main thing I found in common with ALL of these was the two major subdivisions of the beat was first on the beat and second between the second third and the third quarter of the beat. What note we are talking about depends on what note gets a beat. Could be an eighth, quater, dotted eighth, etc..

Without any musical jargon do the following:

• 
  Start tapping your feet in a steady, walking speed beat. Be sure the beat is steady.


• 
  Count 1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4,1,2,3,4 etc. while tapping your foot, on all the beats that your foot is tapping.


• 
  Now keeping the 1,2,3,4 in the same place, insert the word and in between them. You should be saying 1,&,2,&,3,&,4,&etc. This is two sub-divisions per beat.


• 
  Now insert syllables between them so that your foot is still tapping the 1,2,3,4, but you are counting 1,E,&,a,2,E,&,a,3,E,&,a,4,E&,a,etc. It should sound a little like an old fashioned wrist watch. You now have 4 subdivisions to the beat.


• 
  If you keep the placement of all the notes the same, and accent the 1 a,2 a,3 a,4 a, you get a beat that is the upper limit of the swing.


• 
  If you now count 1,a,ly,2,a,ly,3,a,ly,4,a,ly etc. you have three subdivisions to the beat.


• 
  By accenting the 1 ly,2 ly,3 ly,4, ly you have the lower limit of swing.


• 
  It is between the two examples. How much in between depends on the song and the people playing the song.

All professional MIDI (Musical Instrument Digital Interface) sequencers Master Tracks Pro, Band-In-A-Box, Cubase, Performer, Composer, etc. all let you apply a swing feel to a point in between 66.7 and 75% of the time period between the beats you are adjusting the swing to. As do the drum machines made by Korg, Alesis, Roland and other professional musical sequencing programs, professional hardware sequencers and drum machines (The names being dropped are for those who require that authority be called upon).

Since the Music Dictionary defines swing with Duke Ellington , listen to Satin Doll, Perdido, Take The A Train, I Let A Song Go Out Of My Heart, I m Just A Lucky So And So, Love You Madly, etc. I played all of these tunes in the jazz band when I was in school. The basic beat s subdivision is the same swing I defined.

Someone mentioned Benny Goodman, How About Sing, Sing, Sing? The beat is subdivided the same way I described.

Glenn Miller, In The Mood (here the melody itself is a classic example of the swing thing), Tuxedo Junction, Chattanooga Choo-Choo

Some one else mentioned Bop tunes. Most Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie tunes swing exactly as I described Conformation, Groovin. High, Ornithology,

Someone else mentioned the blues (Not usually considered a swing rhythm but it often does) St. James Infirmary, Baby What You Want Me To Do, Kansas City, Night Train (here again, the melody itself is a classic example of the swing thing).

In all these tunes and thousands in my collection, if you clap your hands both on each beat and somewhere between 2/3 and 3/4 of the beat, you will not conflict with anything in the rhythm section because you will be swinging.

The professional level musical products, the swing bands, and other examples all support my original definition of swing. We can t all be wrong. If you want to use different terminology to describe the same thing, it is OK. If you want to subdivide the beat in any other way, you can still make music, but you won t be swinging.

For those of you who still don t get it. In the words of Louis Armstrong, If you gotta ask, don t mess with it. [[there are a few variations of this quote, it might not be correct but it's meaning remains true to the original]]

pickNgrin - Posted - 01/10/2012:  13:35:01

quote:

---

Originally posted by lazyarcher

Glenn Miller, In The Mood (here the melody itself is a classic example of the swing thing), Tuxedo Junction, Chattanooga Choo-Choo

 

---

One of the classic backup licks used in bluegrass is called the "in the mood" lick. It is based around the forward roll, and cuts across the 8-note-per-measure boundary. However, the accenting is somewhat different than the way Glenn Miller's band played it. Just food for thought.

-matt

eagleisland - Posted - 01/10/2012:  14:03:44

Ron Block gave an excellent explanation in this thread from the archives.  His words from that thread follow:

I believe in daily drum machine use.



Evenly spaced notes is good timing.



Swinging the notes (in a shuffle, making the pairs of eighth notes sound like a triplet minus the middle note) in time to a metronome is good timing as well. There are different percentages of swing. 50%-50% is even eighths. 66.6%-33.3% is the shuffle. There are other percentages.



In my own early playing there was a lot of bounce, esp on Everytime You Say Goodbye. Later, when Dan Tyminski joined the band, straighter eighth notes were required to make everything mesh. I prefer the straighter eighths with subtle bounce. Much of what people think of as bounce in my playing, as in the live version of Cluck, is really syncopation, where I am playing chords and notes a quarter or eighth note ahead of where they "ought" to be.



Bounce can be and often is overdone. I prefer straighter eighths, mostly.



Mick Goodrick calls metronome use "Checking in with Time Headquarters." If we can't at all play with a metronome or drum machine without getting off course, we're going to be a hindrance to a band or jam rather than a help. Mick says, "Some people have said that if you play with a metronome your 'time will get stiff.' I wonder about that statement. Is it possible that some people 'project'? (You know, putting things inside them outside of themselves or seeing things that way...) I think it is possible; we all do it. I've known many people who work with metronomes who don't sound stiff to me. (But maybe I'm projecting! Could be. But what am I projecting?)



And he continues: "I think a metronome is as good as the person using it. If we can learn to use it to tune into 'Time Headquarters,' we can learn much. The infinitely perfectable experiences of regularly recurring periodicity. (Certainly, there's a better way to say that!)"



"In reading great literature I become a thousand men and yet remain myself...I see with a myriad eyes, but it is still I who see...Here, as in worship, in love, in moral action, and in knowing, I transcend myself; and am never more myself than when I do."

C.S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism

schwimbo - Posted - 01/10/2012:  23:21:40

The banjo playing in the Chief Powhatan clip posted by Richard sounds bouncy to me, and while there is no banjo in the Jim and Jesse clip, Jesse' mando playing always sounds un-bouncy to me (straight 8th notes rather than the long - short note pairing that seems to be present in in what we often refer to as "bouncy playing").

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/11/2012:  07:37:56

​​Back to the original question.  What is going on with the emphasis?  It seems that it's not swing, because swing is said to occur within the measure, like bounce, and not over several measures.

So I will try to answer my own question:  this emphasis thing is a way of presenting the music, not a technical musical issue.  I will put it into the category of arranging.

Now since it seems that Rose of San Antone doesn't have swing, can anyone post a BG song with swing?  My ear needs some help.

Thanks for all the inputs.

pickNgrin - Posted - 01/11/2012:  07:44:03

quote:

---

Originally posted by Richard Dress

 

  My ear needs some help.

 

---

I think your ear is fine. You can already hear the rhythmic differences, you just don't know what to call them. It is the logical part of your mind that needs help (I hope that doesn't sound like an insult). What I mean is... the part of your brain that hears and appreciates music is doing just fine. But that old left hemisphere always has to come in and act like it is the one in control. It wants to categorize, label, reduce, analyze, etc. That is the part that is having trouble.

When it comes to music, I try to tell the logical part of my brain to take a hike. Just play it, man!

Of course, I aint that good either. 

-matt

Edited by - pickNgrin on 01/11/2012 07:52:36

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/11/2012:  08:04:36

Thanks for the boost, Matt.  Your point is a good one and most pickers should just pick and grin and not worry.  But for those of us concerned with teaching banjo, it is important to understand what is going on.

I have to say that I am disappointed in the HO music gurus.  This was something I thought you would learn if you studied music.  I guess not.  What do they teach at the elite music colleges, anyway?  I am baffled.

pickNgrin - Posted - 01/11/2012:  09:06:44

quote:

---

Originally posted by Richard Dress

Thanks for the boost, Matt.  Your point is a good one and most pickers should just pick and grin and not worry.  But for those of us concerned with teaching banjo, it is important to understand what is going on.

I have to say that I am disappointed in the HO music gurus.  This was something I thought you would learn if you studied music.  I guess not.  What do they teach at the elite music colleges, anyway?  I am baffled.

---

From the point of view of teaching, you could just say "here is bluegrass rhythm 1.... here is bluegrass rhythm number 2, ... etc". Your examples of Chief Powhatan and Jim & Jesse show that there is more than one way to do it. Both are viable and legitimate forms of bluegrass, just different.

It is not really necessary to try to pin down exactly what swing and bounce are. If fact, it just stirs up controversy sometimes because people will argue "no, that's not swing, THIS is". if you leave it as "BG rhythm #1, BG rhythm #2, etc", then nobody has anything to argue about. All that matters is whether the students can hear and appreciate the differences. 

If you really want to delve into the mechanics of it and break it apart logically, maybe somebody here can help. I don't know how many people here actually went to an elite music college, but if this stuff is taught there then you can probably dig up a textbook that would give you the answers.

-matt 

Edited by - pickNgrin on 01/11/2012 09:11:51

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/28/2012:  10:09:05

Ron Block seems to be saying the same thing as Janet Davis.  I looked into old issues of BanjoNewsletter (March 1992, p. 10) and found an article by Janet Davis on Swing.  She also talks of eighth note pairs, accents, and note duration (triplets).  And I couldn't really understand her article any better than all the other good explanations given so far on this thread.  One thing seems clear and that is swing is something going on within the measure and not over a measure or more.  My examples of Jim & Jesse and Chief Powhatan are not swing according to what everyone is saying.

However, as most pickers can, I also can hear and play along with a swinging banjo tune.  When talking about music, nothing is better than music to illustrate a point.  Janet Davis gave an example of Jim Mills swing his banjo break on a Doyle Lawson LP.  Here is her example, which I take as a true instance of swing as understood in the bluegrass world:

Jody Hughes - Posted - 01/28/2012:  10:50:46

" One thing seems clear and that is swing is something going on within the measure and not over a measure or more."

Hey Richard,
From my understanding, that is not the case. In the jazz world, where they talk about swing a lot, one of the concepts that helps make something swing involves playing through more than a single measure.

For example if you had your standard rhythm
1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and | 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and

What you do is hit a note on the "and of 4" and "swing" or tie it into beat one of the next measure. They do this with the backup and with melodies.
Swing is a rhythmic propulsion to me, a momentum. I'm not sure how much momentum one could build in a single measure. I suppose it depends on your perspective, it is something you could analyze and say it happens like this within the course of one measure. At the same time, you could look at it from a wider perspective.
You could have a song where they play one measure swung, but would that be enough to make the entire picture swing?

beenjammin - Posted - 01/28/2012:  11:08:11

with regard to the examples, I'd chalk that first emphasis up to arrangement. It seems to function similar to accenting a seventh chord to give it some extra motion. Its like he's holding the guitar up to say "hey guys, new chord coming!". no need for a technical term, just creative license...

The second piece is about as straight-laced as you get. I'm no bluegrass guru but swing under any definition is not what i hear in much, if any, 'traditional' bluegrass. I'd leave swing out of it entirely I think (which I do at great risk).

Jody Hughes - Posted - 01/28/2012:  11:12:12

quote:

---

Originally posted by Richard Dress

It's not magic.  People with a sense of rhythm can make music.  Some of us were born without a sense of rhythm and reached adulthood that way.  It's clear that you have to have the rhythm inside you before you can put it into your music.  If you don't have it, you have to take active measure to fix the problem if you want to play music.  Many banjo players are so rhythmless that they don't even notice their lack of rhythm.  These are all unpleasant truths.  It may distress a lot of pickers but it can't be denied.

Any banjo student has to understand this and make plans to address this issue.  Plan to spend as much time working on this as working on learning banjo technique.  If you can't play music, why waste your time learning banjo technique?

---

I think these are good points.  There are LOTS of people that learn to play the banjo, they learn the correct notes but their playing is flat.  They don't play notes at the appropriate time or it lacks feeling.  How do you correct this? 

If I had my way I would give my students nothing but rhythm exercises for the first months.  I'd lose students like that though, so I have to incorporate it in as we go along. 

I have students that can tap their foot while playing, they usually have better rhythm.  I also notice these people have movement somewhere in their bodies while they are playing.

I also have those that are completely rigid, these students usually do not properly feel the beat.  Sometimes I have students put their instruments down (so it won't get in the way) and tap out rhythm with their hand on their knees while singing the tune.

I'm convinced our musical education systems do not emphasize rhythm and feel enough in the beginning.  It's too much about notes and groups of notes.  The guy I study music under is always telling me his college music grads very often have a bad SOUND, they can play all this stuff but don't have a good SOUND.  So it's something even very trained musicians have problems with.

I will say this, as someone who had a serious problem with rhythm and keeping my place; I was able to correct it but it was a disheartening process.  If you didn't come out of the womb with an amazing sense of rhythmic feel it's going to require some hard work.  It's EASY to teach someone what notes to play, much more difficult to teach them how to put something behind the notes.

Edited by - Jody Hughes on 01/28/2012 11:17:14

From Greylock to Bean Blossom - Posted - 01/28/2012:  11:33:47

Jody,

A very interesting post. After hearing you play it is hard to believe you ever had that problem. Would you be more specific on what to do to develop a better sense of rhythm or where to turn to find this?

Thanks,

ken

Richard Dress - Posted - 01/28/2012:  11:39:03

quote:

---

Originally posted by Jody Hughes

" One thing seems clear and that is swing is something going on within the measure and not over a measure or more."



Hey Richard,

From my understanding, that is not the case. In the jazz world, where they talk about swing a lot, one of the concepts that helps make something swing involves playing through more than a single measure.



For example if you had your standard rhythm

1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and | 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and



What you do is hit a note on the "and of 4" and "swing" or tie it into beat one of the next measure. They do this with the backup and with melodies.

Swing is a rhythmic propulsion to me, a momentum. I'm not sure how much momentum one could build in a single measure. I suppose it depends on your perspective, it is something you could analyze and say it happens like this within the course of one measure. At the same time, you could look at it from a wider perspective.

You could have a song where they play one measure swung, but would that be enough to make the entire picture swing?

---

Jody, I agree with you.  I think you have to swing a measure or more to be actually swinging.  But then we have all these people talking about swing embedded in the half measure, just like bounce--I am the first admit that they are more educated than I am.  I can see how bounce works in a half measure but I don't really understand how to control the note duration of a stream of fast eighth notes.  I can understanding accenting every other note, but not dissecting triplets.

BTW if anyone wants to see what Janet Davis had to say, email me.  The narrative was beyond me, but the example is a good one to play along with in the key of E.  I can understand musically what is going on with the banjo, but the swing feel appears to come mostly from the heavy downbeat every measure--not from the half-measure business.

stanger - Posted - 01/28/2012:  18:13:32

quote:

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Originally posted by Old Hickory

The first one strikes me as bouncy. The second one as straight but smooth. I have no idea what to call it. I don't hear much if any syncopation in either.

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Same here.

But neither version is all that high on the bounce factor to me; maybe that's due to the straight, unsynchopated singing in both.

regards,

stanger

stanger - Posted - 01/28/2012:  18:43:20

In 'In the mood', the beat tends to rotate in the stuff Lazyarcher posted.



I capped the beat here, and used different syllables, as this is how I hear it in my head.

ONE a la (rest), two A la (rest}, three a LA (no rest), one a LA (rest).



Syncopation uses both accents and rests to produce the swing feel. The 4th measure of In The Mood's rest at the end of the measure is longer than the others to make up for the missed beat in measure 3.



When playing this on a banjo, you can do it using the 1st, 2nd & 3rd strings open.

It starts on the 3rd, with the thumb heavily accenting the ONE. Then it moves to the 2nd, with the index heavily accenting the TWO. Then the 1st string is heavily accented twice with the middle finger, with no rest between that accent.



And when I say heavy, I mean HEAVY. I found that overdoing it was the way I got it. Eventually, it becomes second nature and the over-prounounced beat is toned down and fits.



The rests can occur in many other ways in a measure, and are not always regular in length. But there is always a catch-up measure somewhere following a few measures to keep the timing straight.

Glen Miller is excellent to listen to heavily if you want to get swingy in your playing. His music is simpler and slower than a lot of other swing band's, and his tunes are still pretty familiar. If you sing along with da-da's, you can catch it easier than if you don't sing.

The term 'bounce' in my thinking is simpler than swing. Bounce accents the 2 and 4 beats, or the 1 and 3 beats in regular timing with no real rests. There is some hesitation in real bouncy player's playing that is almost like a timed rest, but is still shorter. 

I've always thought Sonny Osbourne's and Don Reno's playing were a good examples of bounce. When a player is bouncy, a rhythm player can keep straight, flat, un-accented time and needs no rests or emphasis on the chords or single notes.

regards,

stanger