![Metric hierarchy swung versus straight](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c0/Metric_hierarchy_swung_versus_straight.png)
In music, the term ''swing'' has two main uses. Colloquially, it is used to describe the propulsive quality or "feel" of a
rhythm
Rhythm (from Greek , ''rhythmos'', "any regular recurring motion, symmetry") generally means a " movement marked by the regulated succession of strong and weak elements, or of opposite or different conditions". This general meaning of regular re ...
, especially when the music prompts a visceral response such as foot-tapping or head-nodding (see
pulse
In medicine, a pulse represents the tactile arterial palpation of the cardiac cycle (heartbeat) by trained fingertips. The pulse may be palpated in any place that allows an artery to be compressed near the surface of the body, such as at the n ...
). This sense can also be called "
groove
Groove or Grooves may refer to:
Music
* Groove (music)
* Groove (drumming)
* The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s
* The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station
* Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station
...
". It is also known as shuffle.
The term swing, as well as ''swung note(s)'' and ''swung rhythm'', is also used more specifically to refer to a technique (most commonly associated with
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
but also used in other genres) that involves alternately lengthening and shortening the first and second consecutive notes in the two part
pulse-divisions in a
beat
Beat, beats or beating may refer to:
Common uses
* Patrol, or beat, a group of personnel assigned to monitor a specific area
** Beat (police), the territory that a police officer patrols
** Gay beat, an area frequented by gay men
* Battery (c ...
.
Overview
Like the term "
groove
Groove or Grooves may refer to:
Music
* Groove (music)
* Groove (drumming)
* The Groove (band), an Australian rock/pop band of the 1960s
* The Groove (Sirius XM), a US radio station
* Groove 101.7FM, a former Perth, Australia, radio station
...
", which is used to describe a cohesive rhythmic "feel" in a funk or rock context, the concept of "swing" can be hard to define. Indeed, some dictionaries use the terms as synonyms: "Groovy ... denotes music that really swings." The ''Jazz in America'' glossary defines ''swing'' as, "when an individual player or ensemble performs in such a rhythmically coordinated way as to command a visceral response from the listener (to cause feet to tap and heads to nod); an irresistible gravitational buoyancy that defies mere verbal definition."
When jazz performer
Cootie Williams was asked to define it, he joked, "Define it? I'd rather tackle
Einstein's theory!"
When
Louis Armstrong was asked on the
Bing Crosby radio show what swing was, he said, "Ah, swing, well, we used to call it
syncopation—then they called it
ragtime
Ragtime, also spelled rag-time or rag time, is a musical style that flourished from the 1890s to 1910s. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm. Ragtime was popularized during the early 20th century by composers such as Scott J ...
, then blues—then jazz. Now, it's swing. Ha! Ha! White folks, yo'all sho is a mess."
Benny Goodman, the 1930s-era bandleader nicknamed the "King of Swing", called swing "free speech in music", whose most important element is "the liberty a
soloist has to stand and play a
chorus
Chorus may refer to:
Music
* Chorus (song) or refrain, line or lines that are repeated in music or in verse
* Chorus effect, the perception of similar sounds from multiple sources as a single, richer sound
* Chorus form, song in which all verse ...
in the way he feels it". His contemporary
Tommy Dorsey
Thomas Francis Dorsey Jr. (November 19, 1905 – November 26, 1956) was an American jazz trombonist, composer, conductor and bandleader of the big band era. He was known as the "Sentimental Gentleman of Swing" because of his smooth-toned trombo ...
gave a more ambiguous definition when he proposed that "Swing is sweet and hot at the same time and broad enough in its creative conception to meet every challenge tomorrow may present."
Boogie-woogie
Boogie-woogie is a genre of blues music that became popular during the late 1920s, developed in African-American communities since 1870s.Paul, Elliot, ''That Crazy American Music'' (1957), Chapter 10, p. 229. It was eventually extended from pi ...
pianist
Maurice Rocco
Maurice Rocco (born Maurice John Rockhold; June 26, 1915 – March 24, 1976) was an American pianist, singer, actor, and composer known for playing boogie-woogie piano and his disdain for using a piano bench. He was a top nightclub and theater dra ...
argues that the definition of swing "is just a matter of personal opinion".
When asked for a definition of swing,
Fats Waller replied, "Lady, if you gotta ask, you'll never know."
[Dance, Stanley, 1974, The World of Swing: An Oral History of Big Band Jazz (2001 edition) Da Capo Press, 436 p.]
Treadwell stated:
Stanley Dance, in ''The World of Swing'', devoted the two first chapters of his work to discussions of the concept of swing with a collection of the musicians who played it. They described a kinetic quality to the music. It was compared to flying; "take off" was a signal to start a solo. The rhythmic pulse continued between the beats, expressed in dynamics, articulation, and inflection. Swing was as much in the music anticipating the beat, like the swing of a jumprope anticipating the jump, as in the beat itself.
Swing has been defined in terms of formal rhythmic devices, but according to the
Jimmie Lunceford
James Melvin Lunceford (June 6, 1902 – July 12, 1947) was an American jazz alto saxophonist and bandleader in the swing era.
Early life
Lunceford was born on a farm in the Evergreen community, west of the Tombigbee River, near Fulton, Mi ...
tune, "T'aint whatcha do, it's the way thatcha do it" (say it so it swings).
Swing as a rhythmic style
![Blues shuffle in E](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c2/Blues_shuffle_in_E.png)
In swing rhythm, the pulse is divided unequally, such that certain subdivisions (typically either eighth note or sixteenth note subdivisions) alternate between long and short durations. Certain music of the Baroque and Classical era is played using ''
notes inégales
In music, ''notes inégales'' is a performance practice, mainly from the Baroque and Classical music eras, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. The pra ...
'', which is analogous to swing. In shuffle rhythm, the first note in a pair may be twice (or more) the duration of the second note. In swing rhythm, the ratio of the first note's duration to the second note's duration can range: The first note of each pair is often understood to be twice as long as the second, implying a
triplet feel, but in practice the ratio is less definitive and often much more subtle.
In traditional jazz, swing is typically applied to eighth notes. In other genres, such as funk and jazz-rock, swing is often applied to sixteenth notes.
![Shuffle feel simple](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/57/Shuffle_feel_simple.png)
In most
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
music, especially of the
big band
A big band or jazz orchestra is a type of musical ensemble of jazz music that usually consists of ten or more musicians with four sections: saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and a rhythm section. Big bands originated during the early 1910s ...
era and later, the second and fourth beats of a 4/4 measure are emphasized over the first and third, and the beats are lead-in—main-beat couplets (dah-DUM, dah-DUM....). The "dah" anticipates, or leads into, the "DUM." The "dah" lead-in may or may not be audible. It may be occasionally accented for phrasing or dynamic purposes.
The instruments of a swing rhythm section express swing in various ways, which evolved as the music developed. During the early development of
swing music, the bass was often played with lead-in—main-note couplets, often with a percussive sound. Later, the lead-in note was dropped but incorporated into the physical rhythm of the bass player to help keep the beat "solid” - the lead-in beats were not audible, but expressed in the player’s motion.
Similarly, the rhythm guitar was played with the lead-in beat strummed by the player, but so softly as to be nearly or completely inaudible.
The piano was played with a variety of devices for swing: Chord patterns played in the rhythm of a dotted-eighth—sixteenth couplet were characteristic of boogie-woogie playing (sometimes also used in boogie-woogie horn section playing). The "swing bass" left hand, used by
James P. Johnson
James Price Johnson (February 1, 1894 – November 17, 1955) was an American pianist and composer. A pioneer of stride piano, he was one of the most important pianists in the early era of recording, and like Jelly Roll Morton, one of the key ...
,
Fats Waller, and
Earl Hines, used a bass note on the first and third beats, followed by a mid-range chord to emphasize the second and fourth beats. As with the bass, lead-in beats were not audible, but expressed in the motion of the left arm.
Swing piano also put the first and third beats in a role anticipatory to the emphasized second and fourth beats in two-beat bass figures.
[Hadlock, Richard, Jazz Masters of the Twenties, New York, MacMillan, 1972, 255p.]
As swing music developed, the role of the piano in the ensemble changed to emphasize accents and fills; these were often played on the lead-in to the main beat, adding a punch to the rhythm.
Count Basie
William James "Count" Basie (; August 21, 1904 – April 26, 1984) was an American jazz pianist, organist, bandleader, and composer. In 1935, he formed the Count Basie Orchestra, and in 1936 took them to Chicago for a long engagement and the ...
's style was sparse, played as accompaniment to the horn sections and soloists.
[Russell, Ross, Jazz Style in Kansas City and the Southwest, Berkeley, CA, University of California Press, 1972, 291 p.]
The bass and snare drums started the swing era as the main timekeepers, with the snare usually used for either lead-ins or emphasis on the second and fourth beats. It was soon found that the high-hat cymbal could add a new dimension to the swing expressed by the drum kit when played in a two-beat "ti-tshhh-SH" figure, with the "ti" the lead-in to the "tshhh" on the first and third beats, and the "SH" the emphasized second and fourth beats.
With that high-hat figure, the drummer expressed three elements of swing: the lead-in with the "ti," the continuity of the rhythmic pulse between the beats with the "tshhh," and the emphasis on the second and fourth beats with the "SH". Early examples of that high-hat figure were recorded by the drummer
Chick Webb.
Jo Jones carried the high-hat style a step further, with a more continuous-sounding "t'shahhh-uhh" two beat figure while reserving the bass and snare drums for accents. The changed role of the drum kit away from the heavier style of the earlier drumming placed more emphasis on the role of the bass in holding the rhythm.
Horn section
A horn section is a group of musicians playing horns. In an orchestra or concert band, it refers to the musicians who play the "French" horn, and in a British-style brass band it is the tenor horn players. In many popular music genres, the te ...
s and soloists added inflection and dynamics to the rhythmic toolbox, "swinging" notes and phrases. One of the characteristic horn section sounds of swing jazz was a section chord played with a strong attack, a slight fade, and a quick accent at the end, expressing the rhythmic pulse between beats. That device was used interchangeably or in combination with a slight downward slur between the beginning and the end of the note.
Similarly, section arrangements sometimes used a series of triplets, either accented on the first and third notes or with every other note accented to make a 3/2 pattern. Straight eighth notes were commonly used in solos, with dynamics and articulation used to express phrasing and swing. Phrasing dynamics built swing across two or four measures or, in the innovative style of tenor saxophonist
Lester Young
Lester Willis Young (August 27, 1909 – March 15, 1959), nicknamed "Pres" or "Prez", was an American jazz tenor saxophonist and occasional clarinetist.
Coming to prominence while a member of Count Basie's orchestra, Young was one of the most ...
, across odd sequences of measures, sometimes starting or stopping without regard to place in the measure.
The rhythmic devices of the swing era became subtler with bebop.
Bud Powell and other piano players influenced by him mostly did away with left-hand rhythmic figures, replacing them with chords. The ride cymbal played in a "ting-ti-ting" pattern took the role of the high-hat, the snare drum was mainly used for lead-in accents, and the bass drum was mainly used for occasional "bombs." But the importance of the lead-in as a rhythmic device was still respected. Drummer
Max Roach
Maxwell Lemuel Roach (January 10, 1924 – August 16, 2007) was an American jazz drummer and composer. A pioneer of bebop, he worked in many other styles of music, and is generally considered one of the most important drummers in history. He work ...
emphasized the importance of the lead-in, audible or not, in "protecting the beat." Bebop soloists rose to the challenge of keeping a swinging feel in highly sophisticated music often played at a breakneck pace. The groundbreakers of bebop had come of age as musicians with swing and, while breaking the barriers of the swing era, still reflected their swing heritage.
![Dotted eighth-sixteenth](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6b/Dotted_eighth-sixteenth.png)
*Various rhythmic swing approximations:
**≈1:1 = eighth note + eighth note, "straight eighths."
**≈3:2 = long eighth + short eighth.
**≈2:1 = triplet quarter note + triplet eighth, triple
meter
The metre (British spelling) or meter (American spelling; see spelling differences) (from the French unit , from the Greek noun , "measure"), symbol m, is the primary unit of length in the International System of Units (SI), though its pref ...
;
**≈3:1 = dotted eighth note + sixteenth note.
:
The subtler end of the range involves treating written pairs of adjacent eighth notes (or sixteenth notes, depending on the level of swing) as slightly asymmetrical pairs of similar values. On the other end of the spectrum, the "
dotted eighth – sixteenth" rhythm, consists of a long note three times as long as the short. Prevalent "dotted rhythms" such as these in the
rhythm section of dance bands in the mid-20th century are more accurately described as a "shuffle"; they are also an important feature of
baroque dance
Baroque dance is dance of the Baroque era (roughly 1600–1750), closely linked with Baroque music, theatre, and opera.
English country dance
The majority of surviving choreographies from the period are English country dances, such as those i ...
and many other styles.
In jazz, the swing ratio typically lies somewhere between 1:1 and 3:1, and can vary considerably. Swing ratios in jazz tend to be wider at slower tempos and narrower at faster tempos. In
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
scores, swing is often assumed, but is sometimes explicitly indicated. For example, "
Satin Doll
"Satin Doll" is a jazz standard written by Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn with lyrics by Johnny Mercer. Written in 1953, the song has been recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, 101 Strings, Terry Callier, and Nancy Wilson. Its chord progressio ...
", a
swing era jazz standard, was notated in time and in some versions includes the direction, ''medium swing''.
Genres using swing rhythm
Swing is commonly used in swing jazz, ragtime,
blues,
jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a m ...
,
western swing
Western swing music is a subgenre of American country music that originated in the late 1920s in the West and South among the region's Western string bands. It is dance music, often with an up-tempo beat, which attracted huge crowds to dance ...
,
new jack swing, big band jazz, swing revival,
funk, funk blues,
R&B,
soul music
Soul music is a popular music genre that originated in the African American community throughout the United States in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It has its roots in African-American gospel music and rhythm and blues. Soul music became ...
,
rockabilly
Rockabilly is one of the earliest styles of rock and roll music. It dates back to the early 1950s in the United States, especially the South. As a genre it blends the sound of Western musical styles such as country with that of rhythm and blu ...
, neo rockabilly, rock and
hip-hop. Much written music in jazz is assumed to be performed with a swing rhythm. Styles that always use traditional (triplet) rhythms, resembling "hard swing", include
foxtrot,
quickstep and some other
ballroom dances,
Stride piano
Stride jazz piano, often shortened to stride, is a jazz piano style that arose from ragtime players. Prominent stride pianists include James P. Johnson, Willie "the Lion" Smith, Fats Waller, Luckey Roberts, Mrs Mills and Mary Lou Williams.
...
, and 1920s-era
Novelty piano
Novelty piano is a genre of piano and novelty music that was popular during the 1920s. A successor to ragtime and an outgrowth of the piano roll music of the 1910s, it can be considered a pianistic cousin of jazz, which appeared around the same ti ...
(the successor to Ragtime style). In the
Middle East
The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...
, a rhythm very similar to shuffle is used in some forms of
Iraqi,
Kurdish
Kurdish may refer to:
*Kurds or Kurdish people
*Kurdish languages
*Kurdish alphabets
*Kurdistan, the land of the Kurdish people which includes:
**Southern Kurdistan
**Eastern Kurdistan
**Northern Kurdistan
**Western Kurdistan
See also
* Kurd (dis ...
,
Azeri
Azerbaijanis (; az, Azərbaycanlılar, ), Azeris ( az, Azərilər, ), or Azerbaijani Turks ( az, Azərbaycan Türkləri, ) are a Turkic people living mainly in northwestern Iran and the Republic of Azerbaijan. They are the second-most numer ...
,
Iranian
Iranian may refer to:
* Iran, a sovereign state
* Iranian peoples, the speakers of the Iranian languages. The term Iranic peoples is also used for this term to distinguish the pan ethnic term from Iranian, used for the people of Iran
* Iranian lan ...
and
Assyrian
Assyrian may refer to:
* Assyrian people, the indigenous ethnic group of Mesopotamia.
* Assyria, a major Mesopotamian kingdom and empire.
** Early Assyrian Period
** Old Assyrian Period
** Middle Assyrian Empire
** Neo-Assyrian Empire
* Assyrian ...
dance music.
See also
*
Polyrhythm
Polyrhythm is the simultaneous use of two or more rhythms that are not readily perceived as deriving from one another, or as simple manifestations of the same meter. The rhythmic layers may be the basis of an entire piece of music ( cross-rhyt ...
*
Swing music, a jazz-influenced genre of music
*
Clave (rhythm)
The clave (; ) is a rhythmic pattern used as a tool for meter (music), temporal organization in Afro-Cuban music, Cuban music. In Spanish, ''clave'' literally means key, clef, code, or keystone. It is present in a variety of genres such as Abaku ...
for the rhythms of
Latin jazz
Latin jazz is a genre of jazz with Latin American rhythms. The two main categories are Afro-Cuban jazz, rhythmically based on Cuban popular dance music, with a rhythm section employing ostinato patterns or a clave, and Afro-Brazilian jazz, which ...
and
Latin dance
Latin dance is a general label, and a term in partner dance competition jargon. It refers to types of ballroom dance and folk dance that mainly originated in Latin America.
The category of Latin dances in the international dancesport competi ...
*
Jig
The jig ( ga, port, gd, port-cruinn) is a form of lively folk dance in compound metre, as well as the accompanying dance tune. It is most associated with Irish music and dance. It first gained popularity in 16th-century Ireland and parts of ...
for the swung triplets of Celtic music – triplets with a swing feel to them – not to be confused with the swung duplets of "triplet swing".
*
Folk hornpipe of the dotted note variety, often notated in (''The Harvest Home'', ''The Boys of Bluehill'') for the 3:1 hard swing/shuffle of Celtic music.
*
Notes inégales
In music, ''notes inégales'' is a performance practice, mainly from the Baroque and Classical music eras, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. The pra ...
, a 17th-century French usage of similar meters and notation
Notes
References
Further reading
* Featuring a socio-musicological description of swing in African American music.
* An exploration of shuffle, boogie, and swing rhythms for guitar.
*
*
*
External links
Video Resources – Swung Notes– more Swing Rhythm videos made wit
Bounce Metronome which can play swing rhythms ''Drummer World''. The "Rosanna shuffle" as played by the Toto drummer, including audio and transcription.
Bernard Purdie breaks down "The Purdie Shuffle"YouTube video by pianist Greg Spero on Swing Demystified
{{DEFAULTSORT:Swung Note
Musical notation
Mathematics of music
Swing music
Jazz techniques
Drum patterns
Musical techniques
Popular music
Rhythm and meter
Articles containing video clips
Jazz terminology