6 ms·

Downbeat delays are a key component of swing in jazz

81 points by ohjeez 4y ago

jollyllama 4y ago
> An interactive tool with audio examples demonstrating downbeats, offbeats, and different swing ratios can be found on our website (https://www.ds.mpg.de/swing/swingratio https://www.ds.mpg.de/swing/swingratio). This is great!
- danrochman 4y ago
  Great resource - thanks!!
- Geee 4y ago
  This demonstrates the basic component of swing - off-beat delays. As the article explains, this is not enough, but there should also be additional down-beat delays for the soloist. Thus, the soloist and the rhythm section play with slightly different swing ratios.
- wrycoder 4y ago
  About 1.3 sounds optimal to me.
  - jefftk 4y ago
    Closer to 2 sounds better to me; I wonder if it's that so much of the "swung" stuff I've been playing in the last few years is really jigs (and so naturally close to 1:2)
  - jollyllama 4y ago
    2.5 is the most danceable IMO
    - tzs 4y ago
      I wonder if this depends on the tempo? I can't really dance, but if I try to twitch or spasm in my seat in time with the music I find that I'm most conformable doing one movement per quarter note. The tempo is fast enough that I can't really keep up if I try to do a movement per eighth note. With the swing ratio set to 1 I find it easy to get out of phase in those sections where it has a bunch of consecutive eighth notes. The tempo is fast enough that I can't dance and count reliably at the same time, so if I get out of phase I'm stuck that way until it hits a section with longer notes. There's no way to tell if a given eighth note is the downbeat or not just from its relation to the preceding or following notes so I can't reorient myself. With higher swing ratios the downbeat note and the preceding note are grouped, and the gap between these groups is larger than the gap in the group. I can't get lost in that. If the tempo was slower, I could either count while dancing or dance to eight notes and would be fine with a swing ratio of 1.
- adrianmonk 4y ago
  I decided to open pandora's box and experience a ratio less than 1. I set it to 0.7 and listened, and now my brain hurts a lot.
kazinator 4y ago
The most noticeable, iconic component of swing is the upbeat delays, of course. Actually this subtlety with the downbeats could be one of the differences between "smooth jazz" and the real thing. Smooth Jazz tunes use pop beats. There may be swing, but the downbeat in that musical format is typically mechanically steady.
- pessimizer 4y ago
  "Smooth Jazz" isn't a musical genre, it's a radio programming format. A very restrictive one, for that matter, with probably only a few hundred songs tops in it.
analog31 4y ago
Jazz bassist here. If I take my time from the band, everything slows down. I have to follow my own internal time clock in order to maintain a steady tempo. Or, the rhythm section has to do so as a unit.
- kerblang 4y ago
  One has to ask: What about bass solos? (I like bass solos)
  - analog31 4y ago
    I like bass solos too. ;-) A lot depends on the band. I'm not a pro, so I've played with bands at varying levels over the years. There are bands where everybody is instantly lost, the moment that I start my solo. They either lose the tempo or the "form", so they have no idea when to come back in. These tend to be bands that haven't completely mastered jazz playing. Then on the other end of the scale, there are bands where it seems like the time is just magically "there" through nobody's effort. I adapt. If the band needs time during my solo, I play a more chunky rhythmic solo. If the time is "there" then I can take more liberties. I have some personal rules that the band doesn't always obey, such as no bass solo when people are dancing. Playing for dancers is its own beast. If I'm given a solo while people are dancing, I usually play a slightly more fancy version of the regular bass line, and keep it short.
- tunesmith 4y ago
  There's the whole concept of "ahead" or "behind", although as a keyboardist it's never been clear to me which to go for. Sometimes a tension is counseled, like bass being ahead of the beat and soloist being behind. Or it can be tempo-specific. Curious if you can share more along those lines from a bass perspective?
  - agumonkey 4y ago
    i'm an amateur drummer, i never fully grasped ahead / behind formally, all I know is that when I practice patterns, there are times where a mishap causing a slight delay will confuse my brain into feeling an acceleration (like sense of time being borked for a second).. I wonder if they play around that sensation.
the_cat_kittles 4y ago
swing comes from way more than implying 12/8 or however you want to charachterize shortening the ands- its also how you phrase, its your volume, and your articulation. some basic ideas here: https://youtu.be/Fg_W-t_WBBc https://youtu.be/Fg_W-t_WBBc but its also about where you sit in the beat, and how you push and pull. i think ethan iverson said something like "a mans eighth notes are between him and god". ultimately trying to explain swing is like trying to say why a face is pretty... theres some basic ideas, but they only account for part of it
adfm 4y ago
Doesn’t matter if it’s sweet or hot, just give it everything you’ve got. Also, while we’re on the subject, check out J Dilla’s body of work. A true maestro gone too soon. RIP. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla
- jjulius 4y ago
  A discussion involving swung time and J Dilla needs a Chris "Daddy" Dave mention, too. That dude is in a different universe from the rest of us when it comes to time.
- j_kao 4y ago
  For fans of Dilla's music (you may not know the producer, but I'm sure you'll know some of his songs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla_discography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla_discography), I'd highly recommend the book Dilla Time. The author goes into a lot of detail about what swing is, its origins in African music (polyrhythms) and the racial tensions that came from these rhythms, and how it eventually made its way into modern music.
  - jjulius 4y ago
    Can also vouch for this book. I'm about halfway through and I absolutely love it, though I'm biased because I've always had a penchant for anyone or anything that fucks around with musical time. There's a documentary being put together based on the book as well, which I'm really looking forward to.
- agumonkey 4y ago
  I read an article online long ago, telling how he told amp fiddler how he made beat, by aligning tapes with a pencil to overlay samples one by one. I never found that article again and I wonder if his wobbly swing came from the lack of time grid here.
xavriley 4y ago
Someone in my PhD lab looked at this and commented that they weren’t that impressed. The authors didn’t account for the fact that ballads and uptempo numbers have vastly different swing ratios (in both cases practically straight) which skews the results. I think rhythmic phenomena and perception are worthy of study but this isn’t a great example imo
- kmoser 4y ago
  From the article: "A quadratic fit to the data (gray line) as an indicator of preferential swing ratios reveals an increasing trend as a function of tempo up to 160 bpm and a decreasing trend above 160 bpm."
aczerepinski 4y ago
Not conveyed in the title: this is the soloist's note placement in relation to the drummer's. I'd be surprised if this wasn't also true in non-swing styles like rock, etc where "front line" instruments get their time cues from the bass and drums. What feels like perfect synchronization to me is in reality a 20ms delay.
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
dumb1224 4y ago
I'm no musician but I tried to learn a bit of gypsy jazz rhythm guitar. I think it is relatively 'easier' to swing with gypsy jazz style because of the staccato mimicking the rhythm section. Again this is just an observation from a beginner. The rhythm section of a big swing band is very complex.

81 points by ohjeez 4y ago

> An interactive tool with audio examples demonstrating downbeats, offbeats, and different swing ratios can be found on our website (https://www.ds.mpg.de/swing/swingratio https://www.ds.mpg.de/swing/swingratio). This is great!

danrochman 4y ago
Great resource - thanks!!
Geee 4y ago
This demonstrates the basic component of swing - off-beat delays. As the article explains, this is not enough, but there should also be additional down-beat delays for the soloist. Thus, the soloist and the rhythm section play with slightly different swing ratios.
wrycoder 4y ago
About 1.3 sounds optimal to me.
- jefftk 4y ago
  Closer to 2 sounds better to me; I wonder if it's that so much of the "swung" stuff I've been playing in the last few years is really jigs (and so naturally close to 1:2)
- jollyllama 4y ago
  2.5 is the most danceable IMO
  - tzs 4y ago
    I wonder if this depends on the tempo? I can't really dance, but if I try to twitch or spasm in my seat in time with the music I find that I'm most conformable doing one movement per quarter note. The tempo is fast enough that I can't really keep up if I try to do a movement per eighth note. With the swing ratio set to 1 I find it easy to get out of phase in those sections where it has a bunch of consecutive eighth notes. The tempo is fast enough that I can't dance and count reliably at the same time, so if I get out of phase I'm stuck that way until it hits a section with longer notes. There's no way to tell if a given eighth note is the downbeat or not just from its relation to the preceding or following notes so I can't reorient myself. With higher swing ratios the downbeat note and the preceding note are grouped, and the gap between these groups is larger than the gap in the group. I can't get lost in that. If the tempo was slower, I could either count while dancing or dance to eight notes and would be fine with a swing ratio of 1.
adrianmonk 4y ago
I decided to open pandora's box and experience a ratio less than 1. I set it to 0.7 and listened, and now my brain hurts a lot.

kazinator 4y ago

The most noticeable, iconic component of swing is the upbeat delays, of course. Actually this subtlety with the downbeats could be one of the differences between "smooth jazz" and the real thing. Smooth Jazz tunes use pop beats. There may be swing, but the downbeat in that musical format is typically mechanically steady.

pessimizer 4y ago
"Smooth Jazz" isn't a musical genre, it's a radio programming format. A very restrictive one, for that matter, with probably only a few hundred songs tops in it.

analog31 4y ago

Jazz bassist here. If I take my time from the band, everything slows down. I have to follow my own internal time clock in order to maintain a steady tempo. Or, the rhythm section has to do so as a unit.

kerblang 4y ago
One has to ask: What about bass solos? (I like bass solos)
- analog31 4y ago
  I like bass solos too. ;-) A lot depends on the band. I'm not a pro, so I've played with bands at varying levels over the years. There are bands where everybody is instantly lost, the moment that I start my solo. They either lose the tempo or the "form", so they have no idea when to come back in. These tend to be bands that haven't completely mastered jazz playing. Then on the other end of the scale, there are bands where it seems like the time is just magically "there" through nobody's effort. I adapt. If the band needs time during my solo, I play a more chunky rhythmic solo. If the time is "there" then I can take more liberties. I have some personal rules that the band doesn't always obey, such as no bass solo when people are dancing. Playing for dancers is its own beast. If I'm given a solo while people are dancing, I usually play a slightly more fancy version of the regular bass line, and keep it short.
tunesmith 4y ago
There's the whole concept of "ahead" or "behind", although as a keyboardist it's never been clear to me which to go for. Sometimes a tension is counseled, like bass being ahead of the beat and soloist being behind. Or it can be tempo-specific. Curious if you can share more along those lines from a bass perspective?
- agumonkey 4y ago
  i'm an amateur drummer, i never fully grasped ahead / behind formally, all I know is that when I practice patterns, there are times where a mishap causing a slight delay will confuse my brain into feeling an acceleration (like sense of time being borked for a second).. I wonder if they play around that sensation.

the_cat_kittles 4y ago

swing comes from way more than implying 12/8 or however you want to charachterize shortening the ands- its also how you phrase, its your volume, and your articulation. some basic ideas here: https://youtu.be/Fg_W-t_WBBc https://youtu.be/Fg_W-t_WBBc but its also about where you sit in the beat, and how you push and pull. i think ethan iverson said something like "a mans eighth notes are between him and god". ultimately trying to explain swing is like trying to say why a face is pretty... theres some basic ideas, but they only account for part of it

adfm 4y ago

Doesn’t matter if it’s sweet or hot, just give it everything you’ve got. Also, while we’re on the subject, check out J Dilla’s body of work. A true maestro gone too soon. RIP. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla

jjulius 4y ago
A discussion involving swung time and J Dilla needs a Chris "Daddy" Dave mention, too. That dude is in a different universe from the rest of us when it comes to time.
j_kao 4y ago
For fans of Dilla's music (you may not know the producer, but I'm sure you'll know some of his songs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla_discography https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J_Dilla_discography), I'd highly recommend the book Dilla Time. The author goes into a lot of detail about what swing is, its origins in African music (polyrhythms) and the racial tensions that came from these rhythms, and how it eventually made its way into modern music.
- jjulius 4y ago
  Can also vouch for this book. I'm about halfway through and I absolutely love it, though I'm biased because I've always had a penchant for anyone or anything that fucks around with musical time. There's a documentary being put together based on the book as well, which I'm really looking forward to.
agumonkey 4y ago
I read an article online long ago, telling how he told amp fiddler how he made beat, by aligning tapes with a pencil to overlay samples one by one. I never found that article again and I wonder if his wobbly swing came from the lack of time grid here.

xavriley 4y ago

Someone in my PhD lab looked at this and commented that they weren’t that impressed. The authors didn’t account for the fact that ballads and uptempo numbers have vastly different swing ratios (in both cases practically straight) which skews the results. I think rhythmic phenomena and perception are worthy of study but this isn’t a great example imo

kmoser 4y ago
From the article: "A quadratic fit to the data (gray line) as an indicator of preferential swing ratios reveals an increasing trend as a function of tempo up to 160 bpm and a decreasing trend above 160 bpm."

aczerepinski 4y ago

Not conveyed in the title: this is the soloist's note placement in relation to the drummer's. I'd be surprised if this wasn't also true in non-swing styles like rock, etc where "front line" instruments get their time cues from the bass and drums. What feels like perfect synchronization to me is in reality a 20ms delay.

deleted 4y ago

[deleted]

dumb1224 4y ago

I'm no musician but I tried to learn a bit of gypsy jazz rhythm guitar. I think it is relatively 'easier' to swing with gypsy jazz style because of the staccato mimicking the rhythm section. Again this is just an observation from a beginner. The rhythm section of a big swing band is very complex.