swing eighths of jazz masters

[Jazz+]

New Scientist vol 168 issue 2270 - 23 December 2000, page 48

 

It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that swing. But what is swing?

 

WHEN the musical West Side Story opened in London in 1958 the producers had a real problem. They didn't know who should occupy the drum stool. Leonard Bernstein's score was hard. And it was jazzy. At the time most of Britain's jazz drummers wouldn't do because they simply couldn't read music well enough. The classical percussionists, though flawless readers, also had an irredeemable failing. These "straight" musicians, as the jazz world calls them, just couldn't swing.

Swing is at the heart of jazz. It's what makes the difference between music you can't resist tapping your feet to and a tune that leaves you unmoved. Only now are scientists beginning to unravel the subtle secrets of swing. Even today, many drum instruction manuals lay down a rigid formula for swing, based on alternately lengthening and shortening certain notes according to a strict ratio, says Anders Friberg, a physicist at the Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, who's also a pianist. But these rules are misleading. "If you took them literally you would never learn to swing," says Friberg.

The fundamental rhythmic unit in jazz is the quarter note. When you tap your feet to the music you are marking out quarter notes-or crotchets as they are called in Britain. Superimposed on this basic beat are melodies. Often melody lines consist of eighth notes, which last half as long on average as a quarter note.

But no one plays music exactly as it is written, just as no two people would read a passage from a book the same way. If you want to hear music played exactly as written there are thousands of Midi files on the Net which are direct translations of sheet music. And very tedious they are too-convincing proof that computers don't have a soul. Real musicians shorten one note, lengthen another, delay a third and accent notes. It is all part of creating an individual style.

In jazz this interpretation is taken to extremes-and the way jazz musicians play their eighth notes is one of the keys to swing. Faced with a row of eighth notes on a sheet of music a straight musician plays a series of more or less equal notes. A jazz musician plays the eighth notes alternately long and short. The long note coincides with the basic beat, the note clipped short is off the beat. There is a similar but less pronounced tendency to play notes long and short in folk and baroque music as well as in popular music.

Many drum instruction books say that the long eighth note should be twice as long as the short one. But you simply can't lay down a rigid formula for swing, says Friberg. It all depends on the tempo of the piece you are playing. Although professional musicians are largely aware of these complexities-or can at least feel how to swing-inexperienced musicians may not be so lucky. Friberg points out that many contemporary rock drummers may pick up bad habits because they practise keeping time by playing with drum machines, which may rely on the simplistic swing formula.

Friberg measured the ratio between the long and short notes, the swing ratio, of four drummers on a series of commercial recordings. They included some of the best drummers in jazz, such as Tony Williams who played with Miles Davis on the My Funny Valentine album, Jack DeJohnette, part of Keith Jarrett's trio and Jeff Watts, who played with Wynton Marsalis.

Friberg used a frequency analysis program to pick out the distinctive audio signal of the drummer's ride cymbal from a series of 10-second samples from the records. In modern jazz, drummers normally play a pattern of quarter notes and eighth notes on this cymbal with their right hand. He found the drummers varied their swing ratio according to the tempo of the piece. At slow tempos the long eighth notes were played extremely long and the short notes clipped so short that they were virtually sixteenth notes. But at faster tempos the eighth notes were practically even. The received wisdom of a 2 to 1 swing ratio was only true at a medium-fast tempo of about 200 quarter-note beats per minute. "The swing ratio has a more or less linear relationship with tempo," says Friberg.

Although this relationship between the swing ratio and tempo held true for every drummer, there were some notable stylistic differences. "Tony Williams, for example, has the longest swing ratios," says Friberg. This is partly his style. But jazz is also a cooperative style of music-you have to fit in with those around you. "It's partly a matter of who he is playing with," says Friberg.

Friberg backed up his findings by creating a computer-generated version of a jazz trio playing the Yardbird Suite, a theme written by Charlie Parker. He then played the piece back to a panel of 34 people at different tempos and asked them to adjust the swing ratio. He found that the listeners also preferred larger swing ratios at slow tempos while at fast tempos the ratio was closer to 1.

The results are impressively consistent-and they also give a clue to the split-second accuracy that jazz musicians have to achieve if they are going to keep the listeners tapping their feet. At a relatively slow tempo of 120 beats per minute most listeners prefer a swing ratio somewhere between 2.3 and 2.6.

Part of the reason for this relationship between the swing ratio and tempo, says Friberg, may be that there is a limit to how fast musicians can play a note-and how easily listeners can distinguish individual notes. At medium tempos and above, the duration of the short eighth notes remained more or less constant at slightly under one-tenth of a second. The shortest melody notes in jazz have a similar minimum duration. Friberg thinks this should set a maximum practical tempo for jazz of around 320 beats per minute, and very few jazz recordings approach this speed.

He points out that there's a limit to the speed listeners can process notes. When the tenor saxophonist John Coltrane made his first solo recordings in the late 1950s jazz critics began referring to his fast succession of notes as "sheets of sound". "This is what you hear if you don't hear the individual notes," says Friberg.

Just as jazz musicians have a standard repertoire of tunes, so there is a similar repertoire of jokes. One has a member of the audience asking: "How late does the band play?" to which the answer is: "About half a beat behind the drummer." That joke turns out to have more than a grain of truth in it.

In his latest research, Friberg went back to the same recordings and looked at the timing of soloists, such as Miles Davis, to see if they used the same swing ratios as the drummers. He found that the soloists' swing ratios also dropped as the tempo increased. More surprising was the fact that the drummer always played larger swing ratios than the soloist they were playing with. Even at slow tempos soloists rarely had swing ratios greater than 2 to 1.

The difference helps to explain why a soloist can seem to be so laid back on a particularly toe-tapping number. When playing a note that nominally coincides with the basic quarter-note beat, the soloist hangs back slightly. "The delay can be as much as 100 milliseconds at medium tempo," says Friberg.

This tendency to hang behind the beat goes back to the musical ancestors of jazz. In the introduction to the 1867 book Slave Songs of the United States Charles Ware, one of the editors, observed that when they were rowing a boat, the oars laid down the basic beat for the slaves' singing. "One noticeable thing about their boat songs was that they seemed often to be sung just a trifle behind time," he said.

Members of the audience synchronise with the band by tapping their feet to the basic beat. But musicians have a more subtle strategy. "If you generate a solo line with a computer and delay every note relative to the cymbal it sounds awful," says Friberg. "The funny thing," he adds, "is that there is a distinctive pattern that most musicians are not aware of. They synchronise on the short eighth note."

He says that this off-the-beat synchronisation of the soloist and the rhythm section is crucial in keeping the band from falling apart. Effectively the musicians synchronise their internal clocks every few beats throughout the piece. When the off-the-beat notes are synchronised, says Friberg, "you often don't realise the soloist is lagging".

 

 

How the written and played music differ

 

So how did the producers of West Side Story resolve their drumming dilemma? Even after 42 years musicians still tell the story. At the time Britain's best jazz drummer was Phil Seaman, who was a good reader. But he had a problem. Or to be precise, two problems. One was alcohol and the other heroin. But after some dithering, the producers gave him the job. All went well until one matinee, when the regular conductor took the day off.

Seaman had a habit, half-affected, half-genuine, of appearing to doze when he wasn't playing-and during one pause in the music, his head began to nod. Fearing that he had dropped off and wary of his reputation, the conductor gestured frantically to the bass player to wake the dozing drummer. The bass player reached across and prodded Seaman with his bow. Startled, Seaman stood up and fell backwards over his drum stool, straight into the Chinese gong-which reverberated around the theatre and stopped the show.

Seaman stood up, cleared his throat, and announced: "Ladies and gentlemen, dinner is served." The management promptly sacked him.

[J_tour]

Utterly fascinating, Jazz+ -- this is the kind of research I was hoping someone smarter than me would dig up on this thread. I don't have access to this kind of finesse-about-the-rhythm with paper and pencil, but this area of research may be one of the most fruitful for those with the inclination and ability to do the dirty work. Exactly analogous, IMO, to the study of metrics in poetry -- very, very obscure in and of itself, and rather difficult to present spatially.

 

Not a bad little anecdote about Phil Seaman, either.

[linwood]

I said that in 1 sentence.

[J_tour]

Originally posted by linwood:

I said that in 1 sentence.

Originally posted by linwood:

Was the 4th 1/16th hittin' maybe 389?

Well, maybe some of us simps need it spelled out a little bit. Anyway, who knows if you were right? The electrode knows.

[David Loving]

Thank you J+...and for the Erroll Garner links. Anybody need a definition of swing, just listen to those links. Erroll Garner swings real hard.

[Jazz+]

Erroll Garner on youtube.com

 

Just One of Those Things - Garner, piano.

Cole Porter tune.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H0-ukGgAEUo

 

"Where or When" 1962 - Garner, piano.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MyQjJONzksM

 

"My Silent Love" (1962)- Garner, piano.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiIlrWDBttk

[marino]

My friend, please - if I can say something from the point of view of an old jazzer, there's no point in trying to find how much various musicians swing. The matter is much more complex.

 

First, it depends on what kind of tune. Second, it depends on tempo. Third, it depends on the rhythm section. Fourth, it depends on what period, what year, what gig.

 

I find it more interesting to listen for how various musicians place their phrases over the basic pulse. Chick Corea, for example, seems to play most often precisely on the beat, with a precision that we can envy (playing Latin music in his early years has probably something to do with it). Bill Evans is more relaxed; very often, he's slighly behind. Keith Jarrett likes to play very much behind the beat, and John Scofield even moreso. Bud Powell rushed a bit sometimes, and Erroll Garner did it much more often.

 

Of course, all these greats are very aware of what they're doing; they play ahead or behind, but they compensate for that later. It's their way to create a feel of urgency, or concentration, or excitement, or calm.

 

Herbie Hancock is a kind of special case in that he plays with constant elasticity: Ahead, behind or on time, he always know what his target is and how to reach it. Disgusting.

[Finale]

Swing and chords are alike - they don't exist.

[niacin]

If we get past the triplet fractions I think the observations about some players accenting offbeats or sitting further at the back of the beat are interesting. Good drummers can pull the beat around. As Marino noted "It's their way to create a feel of urgency, or concentration, or excitement, or calm". They can also teach their students to do this, through explanation and demonstration. Maybe most keyboard players simply don't have a well enough developed sense of rhythm to be able to play it let alone talk about it. Probably just part of our Western musical heritage, where rhythm has long taken a backseat to harmony.

[Jazzwee]

Hey guys - Just so we are not too confused here. I'm not the one needing advice on swing. This is not my thread and I didn't ask a question.

 

I was just answering someone's question on another forum. My post from that forum was placed here by Jazz+, and out of context. My original post had to do with helping someone on accents.

 

Now if someone disagrees with my generalizations about certain artist's styles, then I'm all for that kind of discussion.

 

Since somehow this thread has been incorrectly attributed to me, I guess I can switch the focus here a little bit because I think there are issues worthy of discussion.

 

What I personally am interested in is the evolution of swing over time, and how modern jazz sound is a lot straighter eights with focus on accents. Each musician is being unique in their sound by their unique accents. Oscar Peterson for example has very distinct accents and that's what will be recognizable as the OP sound when he does his sixteenth note runs.

 

I'm interested in the evolution of how accents have come to replace the actual triplet swing feel, as in Chick Corea's playing.

 

I'm interested in how generally speaking, these masters have manipulated the size of the quarter notes so they swing. It shows such a profound understanding of time and there is much to be learned here. I'm seeing newer guys like Mehldau, swing subtley by positioning their phrases a certain way, but yet maintaining straight eight notes in the line.

 

And I'm interested in people pointing out specific recordings to listen to, that will demonstrate these discussions. Obviously accents and articulation, or even tone cannot be discussed like mathematics. But this is a forum with words, not music, so we can only exchange ideas.

 

So if anyone else is interested in these similar things, then play along.

[Jazzwee]

So, to put some solid issues for debate. Here are some questions. As I said above, modern jazz tends to lean towards straigher eights. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Is this a slow dilution of jazz from its original roots? Chick Corea being a master of straight eights and non-legato playing is considered one of the greatest masters in jazz. Yet he doesn't swing like a black dude.

 

Every musician changes their swing style (tempo, mood, etc). I was actually pleased to hear Chick swing hard on some old video. He obviously made a stylistic choice not to play like that anymore as we never hear that now.

 

Anyway, I'll start with this if anyone is interested.

[latchmo]

First, it depends on what kind of tune. Second, it depends on tempo. Third, it depends on the rhythm section. Fourth, it depends on what period, what year, what gig.

sì sì sì e sì

[cnegrad]

As I said above, modern jazz tends to lean towards straigher eights. Is this a good thing or a bad thing....Is this a slow dilution of jazz from its original roots?

Neither, it may (or may not) just be more about the current state of jazz evolution. It may have something to do with the fact that many of the modern players either have classical backgrounds or have grown up being influenced by players who do.

 

Also, do you feel the same way about someone like Cyrus Chestnut or Harry Connick? Kenny Kirkland (RIP)? Certainly they swing more "traditionally" than the players you mention. It may be more about who a player chooses to pattern themselves after in their formative years. For example, if I recall correctly, Kenny Kirkland was heavily influenced by Monk.

 

Chick Corea being a master of straight eights and non-legato playing is considered one of the greatest masters in jazz. Yet he doesn't swing like a black dude.

I could be mistaken, but that statement sounds like it has a negative connotation. Chick's phrasing is likely due to a combination of his classical background and subsequent heavy Spanish/flamenco influences.

 

Jazzwee, I could be wrong but your personal taste seems to be leaning in favor of those that swing more like tradtional bebop players did. That's fine, it's your choice to make. I just don't know if playing straighter eighths is necessarilly a trend in jazz as a whole, if there are currently just a whole bunch of young players that have classical backgrounds, or if you're just listening to players who don't embrace that particular aspect of the jazz tradition.

 

Regardless, I don't see it as a positive or a negative. It is what it is and I have no problem with either end of the spectrum as long as the artist's music has integrity.

[niacin]

Oscar Peterson and others of his era had solid classical training and included pieces of Chopin and other classical composers in their concerts. I don't think it has anything to do with classical training. And I don't think it's a generational thing - Taylor Eigsti swings like hell. It's possibly more to do with various influences in jazz now, including funk, fusion, world-beat etc. It's not like the latest jazz piano lions are putting out albums of swing standards. I think you'll find bass players and drummers have similarly moved their horizons.

[cnegrad]

Good points.

[linwood]

Hey Jazzwee, you do know that at 105 and swinging at 63% that the 4th 1/16 will fall on the 389th tic if you're thinking that a 1/4 is 480 tics...right? I was goofin with you jazz nutz. When I'm doing an r&b track and you want it to swing, at different tempos you will adjust the % of swing. MPC stuff.....swing

[Jazzwee]

Originally posted by cnegrad:

Jazzwee, I could be wrong but your personal taste seems to be leaning in favor of those that swing more like tradtional bebop players did. That's fine, it's your choice to make. I just don't know if playing straighter eighths is necessarilly a trend in jazz as a whole, if there are currently just a whole bunch of young players that have classical backgrounds, or if you're just listening to players who don't embrace that particular aspect of the jazz tradition.

 

Regardless, I don't see it as a positive or a negative. It is what it is and I have no problem with either end of the spectrum as long as the artist's music has integrity.

This was to raise a discussion point since swing preferences do vary by person and by mood. I can appreciate Wynton Kelly when I'm in the mood for that and then switch to Chick. Total contrast. To me listening to different kinds of swing is as interesting as changing music styles. It's like trying different fine wines. They are ALL interesting to me because they show a mastery of rhythm in a variety of ways.

 

However, may I say that my own personal style is straight eights with accents and I don't really play like the old swing way too much. I don't really swing hard. So I'm just starting a discussion of this. That's just to make it clear where my playing stands. I like listening to all though.

 

Going back to the topic of players, I noticed that even with Evans, he started off with a hard swing and later on (I'm comparing his videos on Youtube here), he goes straighter on newer videos.

 

Now there are players that stick to the original swing style. I'm just wondering to myself what guys like Wynton Marsalis are thinking when the sound of jazz itself changes and swing itself is interpreted much differently from the old days (including the way I play).

 

Remember that Cyrus Chestnut plays at the Lincoln Center. That's Marsalis' turf. He'll define the players that fit into the old traditional jazz mode. Benny Green can swing like the traditional way too, but I saw him live and he played straighter.

 

Personally, I'd like to learn how to play like Chick. I can see that Hiromi and Rubalcaba can play Chick's way of articulating and these players are all more of a different mode of playing that's probably different from a Marsalis point of view. But some traditionalists might label these guys anti-swing (which I don't buy). If it were anti-swing, then it would sound like classical and our ears definitely tell us that this is not.

[Jazzwee]

Originally posted by niacin:

Oscar Peterson and others of his era had solid classical training and included pieces of Chopin and other classical composers in their concerts. I don't think it has anything to do with classical training. And I don't think it's a generational thing - Taylor Eigsti swings like hell. It's possibly more to do with various influences in jazz now, including funk, fusion, world-beat etc. It's not like the latest jazz piano lions are putting out albums of swing standards. I think you'll find bass players and drummers have similarly moved their horizons.

I also don't think it is classical training, although the artists like Chick, Herbie, Jarret, Mehldau all have classical training. They can all swing hard of course. But these major names don't swing hard as their distinctive style so maybe it's just a change of tastes around the time these names became prominent.

 

I'm generalizing here of course. These same artists will swing harder when they play slow (well... not Chick). But their music leans to the straigher eights and rely on alternate rhythmic plays to achieve the swing feel and not a dotted eight and a sixteenth.

 

This same analysis could be done on horn players. Miles Davis swings like a mofo. Wayne Shorter could be classified as the modern jazz sound which is straight.

 

So maybe I can pose the question a different way. Is 'Modern Jazz' (whatever that means to someone beyond Post-bob), characterized by straigher eight notes?

 

I watch live Jazz very frequently. And with the exception of Mulgrew Miller, I hardly ever hear anyone (that I've seen play live) swing hard when they release a new album. Maybe they'll do it in one tune, but generally everyone seems to play straigther. I mostly see these big names in L.A. because of some CD release and that's where I base my comment.

[Jazzwee]

Originally posted by linwood:

Hey Jazzwee, you do know that at 105 and swinging at 63% that the 4th 1/16 will fall on the 389th tic if you're thinking that a 1/4 is 480 tics...right? I was goofin with you jazz nutz. When I'm doing an r&b track and you want it to swing, at different tempos you will adjust the % of swing. MPC stuff.....swing

Hey man, you gave me a good sig line

[linwood]

and it's true...at 105 I would swing at 63%.

[cnegrad]

Jazzwee,

 

It looks like you're looking for some hard-and-fast rule, judgement or decision, and I honestly don't think that there is one. Pro players will play however they feel is appropriate on any given day, in any given situation. I really think that there isn't much thought put into it.

[Finale]

Originally posted by linwood:

and it's true...at 105 I would swing at 63%.

Personally, at 105 degrees of fever, I would probably swing at 478%.

[Jazzwee]

Cydonia, I think you and Linwood are swinging from a tree Just kidding.

 

Cnegrad, you may be right. At least I've expressed my thoughts. It is something I do wonder about honestly. Jazz is played differently even in different parts of the country. Reminds me of the old east coast / west coast thing with hard bop and cool. Maybe I'm just trying to describe something that's unique to my environment. Each current jazz pro has to release a new CD with a new and individual sound. Most of these guys that play at the venue I frequent are from NYC. So maybe that's saying something about how those guys there want to sound like. I realize it doesn't reflect the total music of jazz that's already in existence.

 

Or it could be reflection of the dominance of certain players like Jarret, Mehldau, Chick. Maybe it is market driven. I hear stories of jazz students at Berkeley (from another forum and from a graduate) all practicing to sound like Brad Mehldau in the practice rooms. That's interesting in a way because Mehldau's playing style is classified by some as contemporary jazz. So this could be part of the influence on the new jazzers.

 

I count myself as one of these students by the way. My teacher works on me to emulate a more Jarrett kind of playing, which has kind of the same character as Mehldau and I can describe it for myself as a more subtle swing but more intense focus on the melodic elements.

[Jazz+]

From yet another article on swing eighths:

 

"Years ago an article described how someone in the quest for the Grail had used a computer to analyze the swing eighth notes of a Bill Evans piano solo. Would technology reveal the mystic equation calculating wherebetween even eighths and triplet-eighthstrue swing eighths fall? Such a definable proportion could then be easily passed from one generation to another. But the study revealed a challenging truth: no two swing eighths in Evans solo fell the same distance apart. He followed no formula, and none could be passed on to the reader as the prize so long sought."

 

http://www.garciamusic.com/educator/articles/swing.feel.html

[Byrdman]

An important thing to realize for anyone who is just starting out is that, just like following chords by ear, the unlearned ear cannot pick up all the details. You have to combine listening with practice of playing rythmically to improve the ear so that ones swing will get better.

 

Only problem with this is you will find that some people you thought swung turn out to be dead cats. On the other hand the truly great players sound just as great as ever.

[Jazzwee]

Originally posted by Byrdman:

An important thing to realize for anyone who is just starting out is that, just like following chords by ear, the unlearned ear cannot pick up all the details. You have to combine listening with practice of playing rythmically to improve the ear so that ones swing will get better.

 

Only problem with this is you will find that some people you thought swung turn out to be dead cats. On the other hand the truly great players sound just as great as ever.

What a great point. It is exactly why a little focus and discussion helps and I don't call it mathematical analysis. People can't even agree if they truly hear an accent or not.

 

If you try to play what you hear then you'll know if you really got it figured out.

[7notemode]

I'm glad this topic was brought up. You don't hear it discussed much, even though it is foundational to jazz playing. It is certainly more fundamental to jazz than the discussions on chord progressions (even though that is important as well). One thing not yet mentioned is that great jazz players tended to play the delayed accented upbeat 8'th harder at slower tempos and lighter at faster tempos as a general rule. 16'ths are generally played straight but slightly behind the beat. How a player moves in and out of hard and light swing based on tempo and how they play 8th's vs.quarters and 16ths makes up their rhythm signature and style that we intuitively recognize. I will have to check out the learn jazz website previously mentioned.

 

http://www.youtube.com/7notemode

[SK]

(Making an inauspicious first post here) a generic way to look at swing is by its feeling. Once a musican has absorbed that feeling into his playing from listening, he'll swing in his own way with his own taste - his DNA will be in that swing. Once swing becomes second nature, if you go AGAINST the swing, you'll swing even harder. That's, of course, assuming one wants to swing.

 

And hey, Linwood - wondering... are you the Linwood I 'think' you are? If so, I'm the Steve in Richmond you may 'think' I am. If not, just ignore this paragraph.

[marino]

Originally posted by Jazz+:

no two swing eighths in Evans solo fell the same distance apart. He followed no formula.

I've never used a signature in the six years I spent on this forum, but I'm strongly tempted to adopt this one.

[Jazz+]

From an interview in Jazz Guitar Life.com

 

http://www.jazzguitarlife.com/Jazz-Guitar-Life-Interviews-Warren-Greig.htm

 

"I took two or three lessons with Oliver Gannon. I found him to be very direct and honest as he pointed out some problems in my playing that I wasnt aware of. At the time I had an exaggerated swing feel in my lines that sounded old fashioned, he had me straighten out the 8th note lines with accents on the upbeats. Also he alerted me to the fact its not against the law to repeat a note or leave some spaces in your playing. In addition he said if you dont know many tunes you are not going to get much work."