What is this thing, called swing? (2016)

(I've been swing dancing 13 years, playing swing music for 6)

This article is very thorough and gets across the nuance and futility of trying to define "swing" with only a few rules. See especially the section on swung eighth notes:

> Swung-eighths. This is where it gets cool and tricky, and if you want to swing like crazy, you have to understand this one. When you swing the eighth notes, it means that you take a triplet, and you skip the middle sound. Essentially what you end up with is 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a [side note, as a way to emphasize the beginning of the phrase, you’ll sometimes hear 1 2 a3 4 a5 6 a7 8 a]. This rhythm is common in Gypsy Jazz or Jazz Manouche and is sometimes referred to as a shuffle. This, you may note is a 2:1 ratio. Much swing music is actually played closer to a 3:2 ratio, which is less displaced, but again there isn’t a great way to notate this, so it’s more understood than proscribed. (The original has strikethrough formatting which has been lost in copy/paste)

To make it even more confusing, often rhythm players (guitar, drums, etc) will keep the swing ratio consistent (across a song, or across a phrase) whereas melody players (trumpet, sax, etc) might play with the ratio within a melodic phrase.

Another thing that makes swing swing is syncopation — the author alludes to this but doesn't define it — namely placing emphasis on the swung eighth notes that lie between quarter notes, rather than on one of the quarter note beats. Straight vs swung, and syncopated vs non-syncopated can exist independently, and you need swung and syncopated for it to feel like swing.

There was this music production software, FruityLoops (FL Studio today) which had a "swing" slider. Playing a beat and then moving the slider made it immediately clear what swing is, and why this word was picked to describe it.

FYI, while it does sound interesting, modern pop music doesn't really use swing. Probably because "straight" music is more dance-able.

https://howtomakeelectronicmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012...

i highly recommend looking into UK Garage / 2step if you're into swung dance music. It's essentially the best qualities of 90's and early 00's R&B and D&B put through a dance lens. To me, nothing else in music is more authentically and beautifully 90s-early 00s. Pioneers of the genre such as El-B took the concept of swing and ran with it from a modern electronically produced perspective.

As an electronic musician I also have to say that UK garage producers are absolute masters. It's very, very hard to make swung music that has the qualities of "bump" and "flex" - the prerequisites to a song that viscerally makes you dance - on a computer. "Flex" refers to the way the swing-level expands and contracts throughout a drum phrase. "Bump" refers to the way the flex propels you into the kick and snare.

here's an example of a song by el-b with super tight swing. it's hard to explain without having tried, how hard it is to produce something like this:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lZ3KM5E8wl8

another example:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IlNNrXzi60o

and finally, a 2step song, much straighter, but it encapsulates the sound of an era and genre.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VVycT8k0tjM

I totally thought it would be an article about the old Java swing gui library, but I think I like what it was actually about better.

Meh. I feel like this article misses the point.

Swing is 3 against 2, metrically speaking, but it is also folklore, tradition, and a tremendous amount of micro-information in where each note is placed relative to the beat. The "cutting edge of jazz swing theory" video in the article ticks off most of the boxes:

* There's micro-information in whether a note is ahead of, on top of, or behind the beat. * The swing ratio can vary, and it tends to straighten out at higher tempos. * Drummers tend to play at a higher swing ratio than soloists.

All that said, it's been said that jazz is the marriage of African rhythm and European harmony, and that's not too far off. But the article neglects the Africa/tradition part of it entirely. Search for "Africa" in that article and you find one match. Search for "Black" and you find three matches, all in regard to the color, not the race. But that's where it comes from, and that's the context in which you need to understand it. Why are those patterns found across so many drummers listed in the "cutting edge" video (Art Taylor / Connie Kay / Billy Higgins / Elvin Jones / Tony Williiams / Carl Allen / Jeff 'Tain' Watts / Jack DeJohnette / Max Roach / Dennis Chambers)? It's because they're coming out of a common tradition, speaking the same musical language.

The writer of the article seems to like swing music around the late '30s, and claims that the rules fit well with that music because those people were playing swing without the influence of bop, soul-jazz, rock and roll, and other modern music. I would argue that the rules fit that period of music better for a different reason. This is when it was pop music, and when simplified / whitened versions of it (Dorsey brothers / Glenn Miller / etc.) were most common.

Don't miss the video in the "So, what makes it swing?" section. I think this might interest most HN readers here, since it's about measurements and trying to objectify the "Swing feeling".

Swing is musician accounting for inertia modulation in the player / instrument system. The stick / cymbal pair for instance, a cymbal swings, further strokes will be different depending on when it happens (cymbal coming back or still going ?). Energy waves between both and if the player play with the transfer back and forth he can modulate the swing feel.

The ease of flow you can feel when listening to swing comes from the fact that there's a lot of reuse, kinda like a tuning an antenna.

My 2 cents.