My professor taught us how to swing using the Spanish word for grape "uva"... It's pronounced oo-vah. Hold the "oo" long enough for the amount of swing you want. In my high school half of us were Latinos so it stuck instantly. We use to do drills singing it at ppp and then crescendo fff... Fun times!! Great video!
Looks promising, I was completely lost to Aimee’s clock analogy :(. This uva thing is for quarters, or eight notes right? U-va u-va. How do you use it for triplets?
Subtlety. I've been thinking about that word a lot recently, how the depth of music is in the nuances. Like both beginner and pro musicians might play the same notes, but all the feel just lies within these little details. It's not what you play, it's how you play it. How deep are you willing to go? Jacob Collier talked about it as his ear developing an increasing resolution as he grew as a musician. Thank you Mrs Nolte for helping us developing ours!
Great topic! I think the key to knowing how "early" or how "late" to play your off beat times is understanding and feeling the compound time that underlies pretty much all dance or swing music. For example the Brazilian "clave" and other meters are built on the interaction of 2/4 and 3:2, at the same time. If you can feel BOTH times, simultaneously, and relax into the rhythm, and your timing will be there, (as long as you stay relaxed.). The off-beats are IN the triplet feel of the 2/4 8th notes,, and the 3:2. I think most good players with a feel for jazz and other dance-based genres get this instinctively, but may not know how to express it in words. They may not realize cognitively that they're punching off-beats according to the polyrthythm embedded in the tune. But they're doing it. Problems arise when they don't realize, consciously or unconsciously, that there's a 3:2 underlying that 2/4 (and you can dial the emphasis on either one up or down as you feel it), or when they lose the relaxation, and tense up and try to force the timing instead of relaxing into it. I think the "clock" metaphor is useful at the very beginning, to show students they can chose between an earlier or later timing of an off beat coming into the downbeat. But it's only the beginning. The key is that there isn't just one clock, but TWO clocks, ticking away simultaneously.
Hello Aimee, Your music and teaching is amazing. My name is Robert, and I am a 70 year old piano player who finally retired. With the remaining years left, I need to do some serious piano work. I am a dedicated r+r rhythm piano player who will stay that that way. Your teachings are dragging me into the jazz world. Your instructions embellish my music. Thank you.
Dear Aimee Thank you for sharing all your knowledge . I think I am the one of many which keeps watching you and learning so much . Love from London ( which is not foggy today ) .
Thanks Aimee, great video!! Swinging is what really differentiates a pro from a beginner, and this is one of the best exercises I've found for this fundamental topic. I don't understand why many online videos and tutorials don't even dedicate time to one of the most important characteristics of jazz.
Love this rhythmic walk through of how to balance the nuance and subtlety of accents to achieve the real sense of swing! Wish I’d had this years ago in band; but it’s always helpful !
Thanks for your time and teaching. I grabbed a song from life and didn't want to lose it, so we, my teacher and I wrote it down it took many hours and days because I played by ear ,so the more we wrote it the more I replayed it the more I was frustrated because I did not like it or felt it enymore..It became to classical , now I know why .
I've seen this explained as "Swing Percentage", and it's surprising how much of a difference there is between the lowest amount of swing 60% (7:00 on the clock) and the highest 70% (8:30 on the clock).
Ray Smith?! THAT Ray Smith??!? No way! Ray directed my high school all-state jazz band waaay back in the 80s and I use his lessons on how to swing to this day. You are a great educator yourself, and it's wonderful you are passing it all along with your own flair. I really enjoy your channel and you inspire me to maybe start my own :) Also, the Agony of the Bass Trombone is palpable... Peace! Kenny
Absolutely love your videos Aimee! I play finger style jazz guitar learn so much about the inner pulse from your lessons on rhythm. Keep frickin' swingin' forever!
I think how you feel the time depends a lot on you role in the ensemble. A drummer and a saxophone player can both swing, but they're gonna swing different ways. Most players aren't gonna think about this way, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend thinking about it this way, cause you have to listen to the language to know the sound. Having said that, I think of the drummers ride cymbal as a steep swing like you're describing. However, a soloist can lay the quarter notes back a bit as long as they're lining up on the offbeats. I think that's about the swingingest groove you can get. If everybody's playing quarter notes exactly together, I feel like it loses a lot of gravity. Offbeats should be lined up. That's how I think about it.
A a drummer I've spent a lot of time working on the different swing feels from almost sixteenth notes to triplets. If you listen to great drummers there a real range of feels with this. Some play closer to triplets (Elvin Jones) others close to sixteenths (Art Blakey). I wouldn't say that tighter swing (16ths) is "more" swinging, but it definitely has a drive to it that really makes music feel good. But someone like Elvin playing with Coltrane is less interested in drive and more interested in circularity and fluidity. Maybe that's less swinging I'm not sure. It's a different approach to jazz anyway. An exercise I'll offer for improving your swing: practice with a metronome but keep the metronome on that skip note. So you have to learn to play your rhythms against thst note. Your job is to keep it feeling good and consistent
This is great, it is so very inspiring. I thought before swing had something to do with triplets only. But, now it makes more sense to me. Thanks Aimee.
I want to comp with my left hand and solo on the right. So I switched hands. Right hand doing the simple on beat count. Boy, that was much harder than the original exercise but I think I got it!
When my younger students say they are in jazz band at school, I ask them which jazz recordings do they like to listen to. Most of them have never listened to jazz.
It’s funny to hear you say that you might sound crazy when you’re explaining how to do the moves by sounding it out (chonk chonk) I literally was doing that last night at a group practice and was laughing because half the people in the group probably thought I was a nut for explaining how to play a rhythm by sounding it out but hey if you can say it you can play it. that’s what I was taught. Good video
I’ve been doing your exercise with a free metronome app on my phone, setting it to eighth-note triplets in 4/4 time at about 60 beats/min. I count “ONE-and-ah-TWO-and-ah-THREE-and-ah,” etc., playing the swung eighth-notes on the “ah” click. As I increase the tempo, the “swing” feel improves.
@@peterwrohr1388 Just listen to Glenn Gould ! I think this is more about movement and less about "groove". During baroque times keyboard instruments had usually zero to ow dynamics (harpsichord, organs) so there had to be other ways to impart energy "on the one". One is by following a slightly stretched timing with a slower 1-beat (imagine the swinging of a pendulum that needs to turn around on the beat), another obvious one is articulation. Try it out, it just works.
@@peterwrohr1388 check out Ensemble Pygmalion - they are a baroque chamber orchestra who perform the music of that period as it was intended. Not in the way it was butchered by mediocre classical players and conductors. It’s full of rhythm, groove and swing. These are HUMAN modes of expression that were LOST when improvisation was removed from baroque / classical and when the emphasis went from playing to reading written music. Jazz helped us to return to that.
Besides having some swing dance lessons under your belt and then dancing with yo partner within 15 feet of a LIVE swing dance band who rehearse for swing dancers mainly...I recommend starting into the swing feel by experimenting with your "and"... ID the "one" (down versus upbeat) of a mid-tempo swing tune and start playing with your "and"'s. Its not 'freaking swinging' but for folks who have obstacles with rhythm itself (groove)..there's a good place. Good video. :-)
My God! I have never analyzed it like this... I just play by ear and nuance the rhytm and note/chord volume in a way that feels good and exciting, typically a little different every day. Like a folk musician, I guess.
Nice lesson, I'm a drummer but interested in piano and this particular time feel... Swing also seems to have a lot to do with relaxation, letting it come from the hips more than the arms...
I remember a jazz musician telling me that swing guitar emphasizes the offbeat, and I asked him "so sort of like reggae?", and he either didn't hear me or chose to ignore it.
Does swing get written as it's true rhythm metrically, a verbal direction such as "swing" , or a legend key reference such as quarter note = dotted quarter note? As a classically trained musician, I can't help but write the literal rhythm out, but it makes it looks so much more complicated, and somehow I don't think jazz performers would understand why I'm being so literal with my rhythms, but how else can I let the performer know exactly what I want rhythmically? Am I over thinking all of this? Do syncopated rhythms need to be literal or are they assumed by jazz performers without needing to perfectly represent everything metrically?
So instead of placing it with a triplet feel as in 2/3 of the way between the beats, are you thinking more of a 16th note thing, 3/4 of the way between the between, 1 e and A, on the A? Hope that makes sense!
Some of the boogie-woogie and early R&B piano greats (e.g., Pinetop Smith in Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie, Jay McShann in Vine Street Blues) had a way of playing between straight eighth notes and triplet eighth notes - in other words, on the OTHER (early) side of the last triplet eighth. For me this is a great effect for that type of music and nearly impossible to play because it’s so counter-intuitive and perhaps to some ears sloppier. To me that really swings too, though in a much different (less sophisticated-sounding?) way. And drummers for decades have said that playing the backbeat a few microseconds late puts it in the pocket for a more relaxed feel. I love the fact that great musicians of any genre or era can bend time to their will.
The real mastery of rhythm is intrinsic and natural. It happens from the inside out, not from the outside in. Either you were born with it or you weren't. You don't rationalize it, you don't number it, you can't even explain it. You can try thousands of times and eventually play a rhythm within perfect math, but it will be just that: time math. That said, for those not born with a natural sense of rhythm, this is a helpful video. Good luck.
Not sure about the very late placement of the off beats. Sounds rushed to me, not swingy at all. It's tempo depending in the first place, off beats get closer to straight 8s the faster the tempo. To use your analogy: start at around 11:40 to swing relaxed, get closer to 11:30 when speeding up. Above 11:40 is where classical trained musicians usually land when they're told to swing.
It’s interesting to think about vocalizing things like horn parts or lyrics in Scatting style. If you begin a word with a B sound it pretty much has to start precisely where you would see it in notation, but if you start it with the S sound it’s likely the S part will be before it would appear to happen on the page. I am coming to think that this is where a lot of the “swing” comes from. Sometimes if you’re trying to notate vocal music from a recording it can be a stilting thing to have to notate it because of these subtleties.
@@sharadsemilo hi, I’ve re-edited my comment because it looks like my bad habit of using dictation might’ve made it much harder to understand. There were certain words that did not get properly transcribed. One thing that might clarify as well is that instrumental music when trying to swing might actually be simulating vocal Scatting. My late father was a percussionist/jazz drummer and he would vocalize drum solos in that manner (as he would also do when studying Indian Tablas), then he would play that on the drums, (obviously a very percussive instrument), in a way that would very closely simulate those words or vocalizations used in Scatting. Brushes and sophisticated grace-notes, ghost-notes and rolls are used in these fashions. regarding the “B“ and “S“ sounds I suggest just vocalizing some of these and noting that when you use sounds or words with the B starting it’s more precise and when you use the “S” sounds the S seems to occur like SSSSS and then the body of the sound occurs. To me it seems that the sibilant or S sound comes before the actual note and where it would be placed in time. However notation rarely if ever accounts for this kind of difference between these sounds. But, I think they impart a huge amount of the sensation or the sense of swing and syncopation that is a huge part of musicality.
Thank you, Aimee. Love the concept, and the exercise. With respect, one suggestion: when you want us to play/tap along with you, a count-in would be great. Also, always fascinated me how Freddy Green could swing so hard, while playing (mostly) just quarter notes. It’s the “nk” in the “chunk”.
When you delay accenting the off beat, are you not really shifting the accent to a finer subdivision of the beat? So instead of accenting the eighth note between beats, you are accenting something like the last of three eighth note triplets, or the last of four sixteenth notes.
I didn't understand the initial explanation... and I'm a very experienced musician, just not a jazzer (yet!). Are you just saying to 'dot' the eighth notes (or double dot) rather than triplet them? The two takes from the band sounded the same to me. This is what I feared before getting into jazz, that it can be obfuscatory and mystical about the 'feel'.
It’s only mystical if nobody talks about it. But I think you’ll find that people love to talk about it. You just have to ask the right questions and pay good attention. Head over to Ray Smith’s channel and watch every video he has about swing feel. I think it will start to make more sense.
If it’s exactly a 32nd note or any other value, it’s more ‘grid-y’ than swinging. Every time you swing, you gotta make it not exactly any single note value and keep changing it up a bit. The only way to try to truly swing a midi score would be to automate it’s swing percentage. It puts in some randomness into the the note value variation.
Thanks, Ms. N. I think the original of "Killer Joe" by the Jazztet makes a good illustration of the timing part of this. If you listen to pianist McCoy Tyner's groove during the head, he's playing a *very* laidback swing - he holds the skip note of the vamp way back; pretty much a sixteenth-note swing. th-cam.com/video/7a8Us_e9lvQ/w-d-xo.html
It's because our feet do twos and fours, but go back to twos instead of sixes, so that's why we do quarters when the sixes play. I've never seen N/6 time. Does such a thing exist?
Aimee--many of your videos on "how to swing" have you playing a walking bass. That is an easy way to swing, if you have the technical ability and know where to place your melody or chords in the right hand. BUT--What about those of us who just play the classic A and B rootless "Bill Evans style" chords in our left hands? We have no walking bass, and we play alone because we are not part of a trio with a bass player. We have great voice leading with these voicings, but they are not really designed for solo style playing. HOW do you advise us to swing with this style, particularly if you don't want to turn it into stride by playing a root note on the downbeat and then the rootless chord on the next beat? Can these rootless voicings only really swing if you are in a trio?
Check out my video called “where’s the bass player go” and see if it’s helpful. Your question is a good one. I may try and explore trying to teach that further.
It's interesting that you don't show the music as I find it hard to figure out the swing from the music as opposed to just listening. This goes for anything that has off-beat rythm. I can read the rythm from the music, of course, but I can't really play if well just by reading the music. I have to get it in my ears and "just play" instead.
This is a very hard topic. Early you mention "groove", but this can be complicated if as some claim there is a difference between feeling "groove" and feeling "swing". (I am not taking a position: just noting the ambiguity and equivocal use of terms.) You also use the phrase: "where you place your accent" and this really highlights the difficulty: The use of the "where you place" implies a timing question. But the use of the word "accent" is about stress not time. There are many very hard questions, not the least of which might be if you swing in your living room but no one hears it have you swung? Is swing something you do or is it something that the audience hears/feels?
Let me ask a very naive question: why swing cannot be written more precisely in sheet music or lead sheet? I read a few books (Jeremy Siskind books, Mark Levine, ABRSM Jazz Piano from Scratch) and even asked this question during a college class I attended (I dropped out). No one really explained to me why triplets are played differently in ballad jazz and swing tunes (and notation is practically the same). Why there so much left to interpretation and so little put on paper? Needless to say, I still do not fully understand swing. I would like to add that I have been mostly (if not only) played classical music till the end of last year.
It’s a looooong conversation to have - but - my short answer is that in order to really swing, there are SO many subtleties to your playing that it’s impossible to notate them all. Listening to a ton of swinging music is the only way to really learn to swing. I TRY in my videos to articulate it verbally but listening is really the only true way🙌🏼
How on earth do you get your two hands to play different things????? I CANNOT do that.! I once played clarinet, fairly well.....but piano....forget it!
Fantastic! As a guitar teacher, comping like this is really hard to explain to my student, but this was great. This sounds strange , but take a tennis ball and hold it about 5 inches above table/desk etc. drop it on beats 1 & 3, but let it bounce twice as an eighth note would until you get a swing going.
Hi Aimee, totally appreciate what you’ve got going, and no disrespect intended at all, but I fundamentally disagree with your premise here, and I think what you’re saying is clearly contrary to what Ray did with his band. The clip you play starts with the band totally swinging, right? He models it: “doo VAH oo nn doo VAH oo nn” Then they play it that way. Accenting the off beat. If you transcribe anything that “freakin swings” you will find that the accents are consistently on the off beats. Oscar, Basie, Duke, Dizzy, etc. Ray’s band plays that. Then they play without the accent in order to show how it’s done wrong. Then he plays with waiting too long for the off beat to show how not to do it. So it’s quite confusing for you to play that video, then go on to tell your audience to not accent the off beat and to hold the off beat until the very last millisecond. I know this is a subtle and subjective reality. And clearly you swing. But I think the premise of locking into the quarter note should be what you are conveying here, not to avoid accenting the offbeat in 1/8 note lines or waiting until the last possible moment to play the off beat. The timing of the offbeat is fluid depending not only on personal style but on tempo too. So anyway, I’m kinda busting your chops here I know, and you don’t need to give a crap about my opinion…I just feel like if tens of thousands of people are gonna see this, you might want to reconsider the argument you’re presenting.
Cheers mate! I almost left a similar comment just now, but thought I would look up Mr Ray smith. Watch his video th-cam.com/video/iy-TeE622wI/w-d-xo.html Chapter 7 Swing Feel. I believe Ms Nolte echoes what he teaches.
Hey Peter! It’s a tough topic. If you watch my How To Freaking Swing video, I get more into it than I did here - but the line in Corner Pocket that Ray’s band plays has a contour to it that dictates where the punch is and where the subtlety is. The fifth note is the one that barely gets touched. The third one gets an accent simply because it’s the highest-pitched note in the phrase - but Ray doesn’t want them to over accent it. Do go watch more of his videos and I think it’ll give you fun stuff to think about!
Finally a good tutorial on swinging! Every other video I’ve tried to looked up just keeps saying to go to these weird parties….
It’s possible to do both
Touché!! 😅
Classical musician: "what do you mean swing, the sheet music clearly shows 16th notes"!
My professor taught us how to swing using the Spanish word for grape "uva"... It's pronounced oo-vah. Hold the "oo" long enough for the amount of swing you want. In my high school half of us were Latinos so it stuck instantly. We use to do drills singing it at ppp and then crescendo fff... Fun times!! Great video!
Looks promising, I was completely lost to Aimee’s clock analogy :(. This uva thing is for quarters, or eight notes right? U-va u-va. How do you use it for triplets?
@@alejandromedina2349 He always said that triplets swing themselves.
Check this out. Its a great triplet explanation... th-cam.com/video/T1j1_aeK6WA/w-d-xo.html
@@crgomarro I like that
I think of swinging like triplets with dotted quarter notes
Your voice and your teaching style put me at ease.
Kind of aggravates me. I’m not sure why.
Subtlety. I've been thinking about that word a lot recently, how the depth of music is in the nuances. Like both beginner and pro musicians might play the same notes, but all the feel just lies within these little details.
It's not what you play, it's how you play it.
How deep are you willing to go?
Jacob Collier talked about it as his ear developing an increasing resolution as he grew as a musician.
Thank you Mrs Nolte for helping us developing ours!
Great topic!
I think the key to knowing how "early" or how "late" to play your off beat times is understanding and feeling the compound time that underlies pretty much all dance or swing music. For example the Brazilian "clave" and other meters are built on the interaction of 2/4 and 3:2, at the same time. If you can feel BOTH times, simultaneously, and relax into the rhythm, and your timing will be there, (as long as you stay relaxed.). The off-beats are IN the triplet feel of the 2/4 8th notes,, and the 3:2.
I think most good players with a feel for jazz and other dance-based genres get this instinctively, but may not know how to express it in words. They may not realize cognitively that they're punching off-beats according to the polyrthythm embedded in the tune. But they're doing it.
Problems arise when they don't realize, consciously or unconsciously, that there's a 3:2 underlying that 2/4 (and you can dial the emphasis on either one up or down as you feel it), or when they lose the relaxation, and tense up and try to force the timing instead of relaxing into it.
I think the "clock" metaphor is useful at the very beginning, to show students they can chose between an earlier or later timing of an off beat coming into the downbeat. But it's only the beginning. The key is that there isn't just one clock, but TWO clocks, ticking away simultaneously.
great
lol that trombone player in the orange sweater really wants to be somewhere else 🤣🤣
Simplicity of sharing your knowledge it comes from love
God bless you
Your are so sweet
Excellent stuff thanks
Hello Aimee,
Your music and teaching is amazing. My name is Robert, and I am a 70 year old piano player who finally retired. With the remaining years left, I need to do some serious piano work. I am a dedicated r+r rhythm piano player who will stay that that way. Your teachings are dragging me into the jazz world. Your instructions embellish my music. Thank you.
You are very professional and skilled I like it thank you!
Thanks
Dear Aimee
Thank you for sharing all your knowledge . I think I am the one of many which keeps watching you and learning so much . Love from London ( which is not foggy today ) .
OMG! Your T-shirt printing is a famous housing estate (named Choi Hung, mean Rainbow , estate )where I am living in Hong Kong. Nice video btw😄
Yes I know! I love it! Thanks!
Thank you so much for this lesson, it helped me a lot, specially when to hit the chord in the off beat. Tks a lot.
Thanks Aimee, great video!! Swinging is what really differentiates a pro from a beginner, and this is one of the best exercises I've found for this fundamental topic. I don't understand why many online videos and tutorials don't even dedicate time to one of the most important characteristics of jazz.
Thanks ! Good demo, exercise and explanation.
Love this rhythmic walk through of how to balance the nuance and subtlety of accents to achieve the real sense of swing! Wish I’d had this years ago in band; but it’s always helpful !
Great approach! Thanks, Aimme!
A great description. Thankyou
This video has reenforced to me just how good my middle-school band teacher really was. :-)
Thanks for your time and teaching. I grabbed a song from life and didn't want to lose it, so we, my teacher and I wrote it down it took many hours and days because I played by ear ,so the more we wrote it the more I replayed it the more I was frustrated because I did not like it or felt it enymore..It became to classical , now I know why .
I've seen this explained as "Swing Percentage", and it's surprising how much of a difference there is between the lowest amount of swing 60% (7:00 on the clock) and the highest 70% (8:30 on the clock).
Same here, though her point of deemphasizing the off beats feels like a missing piece.
Ray Smith?! THAT Ray Smith??!? No way! Ray directed my high school all-state jazz band waaay back in the 80s and I use his lessons on how to swing to this day.
You are a great educator yourself, and it's wonderful you are passing it all along with your own flair. I really enjoy your channel and you inspire me to maybe start my own :)
Also, the Agony of the Bass Trombone is palpable...
Peace!
Kenny
I just want to thank you for this video. Out of 10, i would give 9,99. Why not 10? The angle of the camera.
Really like the way you explain.
Can’t win em all but I’ll take it 🥇 🙌🏼
Thanks, Aimee
Very good lesson!
It seems like Aimee is the only music utuber that is willing to talk about swing. Always helpful.
Fabulous truth about swing .. hits the spot ..!! Thanks a lot !!
Absolutely love your videos Aimee! I play finger style jazz guitar learn so much about the inner pulse from your lessons on rhythm. Keep frickin' swingin' forever!
Yes! The most fundamental groove concept every swingin’ jazz musician needs to have internalized. Great and VERY IMPORTANT video.
It's fun to replay the intro over and over and try to do a different scat line to it.
Great video.
I think how you feel the time depends a lot on you role in the ensemble. A drummer and a saxophone player can both swing, but they're gonna swing different ways. Most players aren't gonna think about this way, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend thinking about it this way, cause you have to listen to the language to know the sound. Having said that, I think of the drummers ride cymbal as a steep swing like you're describing. However, a soloist can lay the quarter notes back a bit as long as they're lining up on the offbeats. I think that's about the swingingest groove you can get. If everybody's playing quarter notes exactly together, I feel like it loses a lot of gravity. Offbeats should be lined up. That's how I think about it.
Great! Thanks for sharing these truly useful tips.
Thank you Aimee - a very good lecture.
wonderfull! as a brazilian guitarrist i follow you channel cause it allways shows, crystal clear, what the swing language means!
Thanx, Maestra Aimee🌹🌹🌹
What a great teacher. I've always loved Aimee's swing, but I ain't got it, yet. Will try this.
Love how you break things down!
this drummer approves of your message :-)
thanks for choosing an exercise that even a complete amateur can do! love that swing!
A a drummer I've spent a lot of time working on the different swing feels from almost sixteenth notes to triplets. If you listen to great drummers there a real range of feels with this. Some play closer to triplets (Elvin Jones) others close to sixteenths (Art Blakey).
I wouldn't say that tighter swing (16ths) is "more" swinging, but it definitely has a drive to it that really makes music feel good. But someone like Elvin playing with Coltrane is less interested in drive and more interested in circularity and fluidity. Maybe that's less swinging I'm not sure. It's a different approach to jazz anyway.
An exercise I'll offer for improving your swing: practice with a metronome but keep the metronome on that skip note. So you have to learn to play your rhythms against thst note. Your job is to keep it feeling good and consistent
This is great, it is so very inspiring. I thought before swing had something to do with triplets only. But, now it makes more sense to me. Thanks Aimee.
I usually start swinging after 6 beers! 😀. Great video!
I want to comp with my left hand and solo on the right. So I switched hands. Right hand doing the simple on beat count. Boy, that was much harder than the original exercise but I think I got it!
Amazing video! Thank you so much!!!
So, that's how you swing it! Great lesson! I can't wait to practice! Thanks for sharing, Aimee!
Great video Aimee! Learnt a lot :)
Love the way you break down these things into easy to follow tips and ideas. Awesome content!🎶💯
Cool name for a tune. Eleven 55!
When my younger students say they are in jazz band at school, I ask them which jazz recordings do they like to listen to. Most of them have never listened to jazz.
Swing it Baby!
so helpful, what a concept!
It’s funny to hear you say that you might sound crazy when you’re explaining how to do the moves by sounding it out (chonk chonk) I literally was doing that last night at a group practice and was laughing because half the people in the group probably thought I was a nut for explaining how to play a rhythm by sounding it out but hey if you can say it you can play it. that’s what I was taught. Good video
I’ve been doing your exercise with a free metronome app on my phone, setting it to eighth-note triplets in 4/4 time at about 60 beats/min. I count “ONE-and-ah-TWO-and-ah-THREE-and-ah,” etc., playing the swung eighth-notes on the “ah” click. As I increase the tempo, the “swing” feel improves.
Basie is the way.
I wouldn't ask you to do that, ever... We're here to freakin' swing.
reminds me of articulations i use in baroque music: i usually play the first 8th note legato and 2nd staccato for lots of energy followed by little
O really? I thought there is no groove in baroque music. Can you give me a link to Baroque music with a groove?
@@peterwrohr1388 Just listen to Glenn Gould ! I think this is more about movement and less about "groove". During baroque times keyboard instruments had usually zero to ow dynamics (harpsichord, organs) so there had to be other ways to impart energy "on the one". One is by following a slightly stretched timing with a slower 1-beat (imagine the swinging of a pendulum that needs to turn around on the beat), another obvious one is articulation. Try it out, it just works.
@@peterwrohr1388 check out Ensemble Pygmalion - they are a baroque chamber orchestra who perform the music of that period as it was intended. Not in the way it was butchered by mediocre classical players and conductors. It’s full of rhythm, groove and swing. These are HUMAN modes of expression that were LOST when improvisation was removed from baroque / classical and when the emphasis went from playing to reading written music. Jazz helped us to return to that.
@@peterwrohr1388 anything by Scarlotti! Look into baroque dance suites too.
Besides having some swing dance lessons under your belt and then dancing with yo partner within 15 feet of a LIVE swing dance band who rehearse for swing dancers mainly...I recommend starting into the swing feel by experimenting with your "and"... ID the "one" (down versus upbeat) of a mid-tempo swing tune and start playing with your "and"'s. Its not 'freaking swinging' but for folks who have obstacles with rhythm itself (groove)..there's a good place. Good video. :-)
Thank you so much for this video! Your suggestions are going to help my guitar rhythm playing out so much!
Sounds like Mack the Knife..Great instructions Aimee
My God! I have never analyzed it like this... I just play by ear and nuance the rhytm and note/chord volume in a way that feels good and exciting, typically a little different every day. Like a folk musician, I guess.
You are doing it right if it swings
grazie davvero bello (thanks really beautifull) ciao!
Most swinging music is from Cuba and Brazil. The way Brazilian percussionists play the tambourine is mental.
Great as usual! Would love to see a video on "The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization"!
Thank you for this. I do need to improve swinging a lot
Nice lesson, I'm a drummer but interested in piano and this particular time feel... Swing also seems to have a lot to do with relaxation, letting it come from the hips more than the arms...
Aimee the human metronome-rock-solid time (lovely)
You are cool ✌
Eu te amo, Aimee.
I remember a jazz musician telling me that swing guitar emphasizes the offbeat, and I asked him "so sort of like reggae?", and he either didn't hear me or chose to ignore it.
I'd say listen to the blues too. The blues shuffle train leaves exactly at 11:55
Does swing get written as it's true rhythm metrically, a verbal direction such as "swing" , or a legend key reference such as quarter note = dotted quarter note? As a classically trained musician, I can't help but write the literal rhythm out, but it makes it looks so much more complicated, and somehow I don't think jazz performers would understand why I'm being so literal with my rhythms, but how else can I let the performer know exactly what I want rhythmically? Am I over thinking all of this? Do syncopated rhythms need to be literal or are they assumed by jazz performers without needing to perfectly represent everything metrically?
just write swing and play it as you like, the musicians will all line up after hearing where you want to swing :)
Can you do some new bill evans content? Really love your approach to his playing ☺️ have a great day!
1:46 guy in orange hoodie seriously took this for granted
😂
So instead of placing it with a triplet feel as in 2/3 of the way between the beats, are you thinking more of a 16th note thing, 3/4 of the way between the between, 1 e and A, on the A? Hope that makes sense!
That’s right. Maybe even more sometimes!
This what noted drum teacher Jim Chapin preached too: accent the last of the four sixteenths of a quarter note to produce a smooth syncopation.
Some of the boogie-woogie and early R&B piano greats (e.g., Pinetop Smith in Pinetop’s Boogie Woogie, Jay McShann in Vine Street Blues) had a way of playing between straight eighth notes and triplet eighth notes - in other words, on the OTHER (early) side of the last triplet eighth. For me this is a great effect for that type of music and nearly impossible to play because it’s so counter-intuitive and perhaps to some ears sloppier. To me that really swings too, though in a much different (less sophisticated-sounding?) way. And drummers for decades have said that playing the backbeat a few microseconds late puts it in the pocket for a more relaxed feel. I love the fact that great musicians of any genre or era can bend time to their will.
Awesoem stuff
The real mastery of rhythm is intrinsic and natural. It happens from the inside out, not from the outside in. Either you were born with it or you weren't. You don't rationalize it, you don't number it, you can't even explain it. You can try thousands of times and eventually play a rhythm within perfect math, but it will be just that: time math. That said, for those not born with a natural sense of rhythm, this is a helpful video. Good luck.
Can you teach Omkring Tiggarn Från Luossa Hootenanny Singers (Bjorn's Band before ABBA)?
Not sure about the very late placement of the off beats. Sounds rushed to me, not swingy at all.
It's tempo depending in the first place, off beats get closer to straight 8s the faster the tempo. To use your analogy: start at around 11:40 to swing relaxed, get closer to 11:30 when speeding up. Above 11:40 is where classical trained musicians usually land when they're told to swing.
It’s interesting to think about vocalizing things like horn parts or lyrics in Scatting style. If you begin a word with a B sound it pretty much has to start precisely where you would see it in notation, but if you start it with the S sound it’s likely the S part will be before it would appear to happen on the page. I am coming to think that this is where a lot of the “swing” comes from. Sometimes if you’re trying to notate vocal music from a recording it can be a stilting thing to have to notate it because of these subtleties.
I didn't understand what you mean by B and S parts and of course then the rest as well. Would you please explain this?
@@sharadsemilo hi, I’ve re-edited my comment because it looks like my bad habit of using dictation might’ve made it much harder to understand. There were certain words that did not get properly transcribed. One thing that might clarify as well is that instrumental music when trying to swing might actually be simulating vocal Scatting. My late father was a percussionist/jazz drummer and he would vocalize drum solos in that manner (as he would also do when studying Indian Tablas), then he would play that on the drums, (obviously a very percussive instrument), in a way that would very closely simulate those words or vocalizations used in Scatting. Brushes and sophisticated grace-notes, ghost-notes and rolls are used in these fashions.
regarding the “B“ and “S“ sounds I suggest just vocalizing some of these and noting that when you use sounds or words with the B starting it’s more precise and when you use the “S” sounds the S seems to occur like SSSSS and then the body of the sound occurs. To me it seems that the sibilant or S sound comes before the actual note and where it would be placed in time. However notation rarely if ever accounts for this kind of difference between these sounds. But, I think they impart a huge amount of the sensation or the sense of swing and syncopation that is a huge part of musicality.
More like 11:55:59secs 🙂 I always equate this feel to ghost notes for a drummer...
Thank you, Aimee. Love the concept, and the exercise. With respect, one suggestion: when you want us to play/tap along with you, a count-in would be great.
Also, always fascinated me how Freddy Green could swing so hard, while playing (mostly) just quarter notes. It’s the “nk” in the “chunk”.
Do you listen to your own recordings? Does your recorded sound swing as hard as the greats? If it doesn't, then keep at it.
When you delay accenting the off beat, are you not really shifting the accent to a finer subdivision of the beat? So instead of accenting the eighth note between beats, you are accenting something like the last of three eighth note triplets, or the last of four sixteenth notes.
I didn't understand the initial explanation... and I'm a very experienced musician, just not a jazzer (yet!). Are you just saying to 'dot' the eighth notes (or double dot) rather than triplet them? The two takes from the band sounded the same to me. This is what I feared before getting into jazz, that it can be obfuscatory and mystical about the 'feel'.
It’s only mystical if nobody talks about it. But I think you’ll find that people love to talk about it. You just have to ask the right questions and pay good attention. Head over to Ray Smith’s channel and watch every video he has about swing feel. I think it will start to make more sense.
You're a god send!
why not call that second eighth note a sixteenth note, or 1/32 note, or whatever it actually is? How would you make a midi score swing?
If it’s exactly a 32nd note or any other value, it’s more ‘grid-y’ than swinging. Every time you swing, you gotta make it not exactly any single note value and keep changing it up a bit.
The only way to try to truly swing a midi score would be to automate it’s swing percentage. It puts in some randomness into the the note value variation.
Thanks, Ms. N. I think the original of "Killer Joe" by the Jazztet makes a good illustration of the timing part of this. If you listen to pianist McCoy Tyner's groove during the head, he's playing a *very* laidback swing - he holds the skip note of the vamp way back; pretty much a sixteenth-note swing. th-cam.com/video/7a8Us_e9lvQ/w-d-xo.html
Would it be so much to ask for you to give us a selection of bars with different accents for us to practice?
It's because our feet do twos and fours, but go back to twos instead of sixes, so that's why we do quarters when the sixes play. I've never seen N/6 time. Does such a thing exist?
Freakin’ swing!
Aimee--many of your videos on "how to swing" have you playing a walking bass. That is an easy way to swing, if you have the technical ability and know where to place your melody or chords in the right hand.
BUT--What about those of us who just play the classic A and B rootless "Bill Evans style" chords in our left hands? We have no walking bass, and we play alone because we are not part of a trio with a bass player. We have great voice leading with these voicings, but they are not really designed for solo style playing. HOW do you advise us to swing with this style, particularly if you don't want to turn it into stride by playing a root note on the downbeat and then the rootless chord on the next beat? Can these rootless voicings only really swing if you are in a trio?
Check out my video called “where’s the bass player go” and see if it’s helpful. Your question is a good one. I may try and explore trying to teach that further.
It's interesting that you don't show the music as I find it hard to figure out the swing from the music as opposed to just listening. This goes for anything that has off-beat rythm. I can read the rythm from the music, of course, but I can't really play if well just by reading the music. I have to get it in my ears and "just play" instead.
So where in this instruction video do you swing ?
This is a very hard topic.
Early you mention "groove", but this can be complicated if as some claim there is a difference between feeling "groove" and feeling "swing". (I am not taking a position: just noting the ambiguity and equivocal use of terms.)
You also use the phrase: "where you place your accent" and this really highlights the difficulty:
The use of the "where you place" implies a timing question.
But the use of the word "accent" is about stress not time.
There are many very hard questions, not the least of which might be if you swing in your living room but no one hears it have you swung? Is swing something you do or is it something that the audience hears/feels?
Just do the exercise lol
Let me ask a very naive question: why swing cannot be written more precisely in sheet music or lead sheet? I read a few books (Jeremy Siskind books, Mark Levine, ABRSM Jazz Piano from Scratch) and even asked this question during a college class I attended (I dropped out). No one really explained to me why triplets are played differently in ballad jazz and swing tunes (and notation is practically the same). Why there so much left to interpretation and so little put on paper? Needless to say, I still do not fully understand swing. I would like to add that I have been mostly (if not only) played classical music till the end of last year.
It’s a looooong conversation to have - but - my short answer is that in order to really swing, there are SO many subtleties to your playing that it’s impossible to notate them all. Listening to a ton of swinging music is the only way to really learn to swing. I TRY in my videos to articulate it verbally but listening is really the only true way🙌🏼
@@AimeeNolte Thank you for your explanation, Aimee!
That guy on the right side at 1:48 seems to be completely overwhelmed ;-)
How on earth do you get your two hands to play different things????? I CANNOT do that.! I once played clarinet, fairly well.....but piano....forget it!
Fantastic! As a guitar teacher, comping like this is really hard to explain to my student, but this was great. This sounds strange , but take a tennis ball and hold it about 5 inches above table/desk etc. drop it on beats 1 & 3, but let it bounce twice as an eighth note would until you get a swing going.
Hi Aimee, totally appreciate what you’ve got going, and no disrespect intended at all, but I fundamentally disagree with your premise here, and I think what you’re saying is clearly contrary to what Ray did with his band. The clip you play starts with the band totally swinging, right? He models it: “doo VAH oo nn doo VAH oo nn” Then they play it that way. Accenting the off beat. If you transcribe anything that “freakin swings” you will find that the accents are consistently on the off beats. Oscar, Basie, Duke, Dizzy, etc. Ray’s band plays that. Then they play without the accent in order to show how it’s done wrong. Then he plays with waiting too long for the off beat to show how not to do it. So it’s quite confusing for you to play that video, then go on to tell your audience to not accent the off beat and to hold the off beat until the very last millisecond. I know this is a subtle and subjective reality. And clearly you swing. But I think the premise of locking into the quarter note should be what you are conveying here, not to avoid accenting the offbeat in 1/8 note lines or waiting until the last possible moment to play the off beat. The timing of the offbeat is fluid depending not only on personal style but on tempo too. So anyway, I’m kinda busting your chops here I know, and you don’t need to give a crap about my opinion…I just feel like if tens of thousands of people are gonna see this, you might want to reconsider the argument you’re presenting.
Cheers mate! I almost left a similar comment just now, but thought I would look up Mr Ray smith. Watch his video th-cam.com/video/iy-TeE622wI/w-d-xo.html Chapter 7 Swing Feel. I believe Ms Nolte echoes what he teaches.
Hey Peter! It’s a tough topic. If you watch my How To Freaking Swing video, I get more into it than I did here - but the line in Corner Pocket that Ray’s band plays has a contour to it that dictates where the punch is and where the subtlety is. The fifth note is the one that barely gets touched. The third one gets an accent simply because it’s the highest-pitched note in the phrase - but Ray doesn’t want them to over accent it. Do go watch more of his videos and I think it’ll give you fun stuff to think about!
@@AimeeNolte I dig, Aimee, thanks for replying! I’ll check it out. I want to understand the perspective.