There is a famous incident that happened at the time of the American Civil War. A cavalry regiment had been training without sabers (they having not been issued), the day came for a review by the higher ups, Model 1860 Cavalry Sabers (steel scabbards) were issued, the men (and horses) having never handled them before. The regiment was drawn up in formation and the order came, "Draw Sabers", the ensuing mayhem caused by the noise of the sabers being drawn sent the horses wild, running and throwing riders. Needless to say, the review was over and it took the rest of the day to round up wayward horses and tend to injured men. I'd say the "Schwing" definitely was heard.
it may depend on the sword for sure. I teared something like a Shwing in real life in Romania when I took a photo whith an Austrohungarian reinacter, who drew his saber and made a sound, not like the movie one, a drier kind of sound but definitely a shwing. I can hear a similar sound watching old romanian period films where you can tell they didn't add extra sounds to the scene. The sounds swords do in those movies are as Matt said, loud but not fully a shwing. But both in real life and in those movies I heared a type of dry sound more similar to a movie Shwing, whithout the ringing at the end
My favorite of this trope is the "quiet" or maybe "implied" schwing. Usually low-budget Japanese but sometimes Chinese. The scene is something like: ruffians are picking on some lone person, like a vagabond-looking dude or a little girl. At first it's just taunting but then someone pulls a knife or gets a rope. Person quietly, probably with just their thumb, frees their sword from its scabbard, just a few millimeters. It makes a very slight rasping sound, and maybe the blade glints. Queue first big action scene. Sometimes they'll change it up and an outside force makes the bandits run off, while the person quietly resheathes.
I like the version of this where the "shwinger" has to move very slowly, or else their shwing is too loud and they will be caught swording about where they oughtnt
The reason why most Hollywood sound designs aren't realistic is that the sounds remind the audience is a better way to communicate, the feeling of the thing than the actual sound of the thing what it would sound realistically.
for sure, movie sound design is a really important part of conveying mood and tone and story, etc. really, there's plenty of even more pedestrian sound design that is equally or even more "unrealistic" but is important for the storytelling but no one quibbles about because it doesn't fall under the category of some sort of knowledge that someone can feel a little haughty about "knowing better" about.
Yeah. The thing is that real life is often not helpfully signposted. Movies and other media are all about symbols and signals. Real life does not provide these, any more than what you learn to look for yourself. For a person who is not deeply versed in something like this, using swords (both sound-wise and even just visually) can be very underwhelming or seem like not much is even happening. A movie (that isn't specifically trying to be some really niche expertise thing on the subject) will benefit way more from being easy to parse for anyone at all used to the conventions of movies, rather than high fidelity. For a person who does not know much about sword fighting, a fairly intense and technical duel might look like two people scrabbling around each other with sharp metal sticks, until one gets lightly tapped and seems to just fall down. Putting his in a movie, just raw as is, would be very... underwhelming at best. And the same for sound; having the movie just be 100% plausible sound effects would be very hard to even focus on, since it's all muddled and mostly rather muted. (And yes, of course an expert will draw much more meaning from any of this. But most moviegoers are not, and should not be required to be, experts on any given subject just to understand the actual narrative in a film that is not specifically trying to represent the specific activity/thing as the main topic of the movie.) The awkward part is, of course, how this can then twist understanding of the subject with various misconceptions and urban legends, but I do not find it very fruitful to strive for high degree of fidelity at the expense of losing signals that are actually parseable for a normal person.
Wow what a call back. The world really has changed in the past 16 years, I just had a HEMA student I worked with that was not even born when that video was released :D
On a similar topic - my mate Clive who served in the Army says he heard maybe 2 or 3 ricochets during his whole time in it, target practice and live shooting and all. Compare any movie of every era.
To be fair, in target practice shooting you set up the targets in such a way to prevent ricochets from happening. Because bullets that come back are equally deadly.
I'm convinced that the main driving force behind the exploration of the American West was the need to find places with the right kind of rocks and a good echo to have your gunfights in!
But some movies do a good job of portraying the sound of richochets. Much easier to hear shooting suppressed, especially .22 lr and hitting an hard object.
Its the tip vibrating when leaving the scabard in a bend, resulting in resonation, the same basic principle as hitting a tuning fork or piece of steels or when tipping a ruler with your finger when held on the side of a hard surface like a table, the certain size and flexibility and length of the ruler, or swordblade in this case, makes a note of certain hight, moving the ruler to and from the hard surface changes the length of the ruler and thus hight of the tone.
From a few pieces a Friend and I were comparing found that the "Schwing" was most influenced between what ever the 'throat' of the scabbard has around it and how it interacts with the blade. A metal topmount around the throat that hits a blade thin enough to vibrate will ring when drawn a certain way, while a thicker blade or one that has not metal topmount ring around the throat doesn't schwing. The Buddy's wife had a few Han-jian and hers made wildly different noises between the antler throated one, the brass throated one and the all wood scabbard. The Brass one didn't Schwing at all because it was made with a thicker more ridged blade, so that makes me think the blade has some influence.
My guy, a professional sword dealer, HEMA fencer, and historical weapons and combat expert Matt Easton, responding to a 10 year old lindybeige video so he can play around by drawing swords and listening for a ring. Absolutely Chad move 10/10.
Funny enough, i have a tomahawk, a cold steel norse hawk, and years ago i went camping with some friends, and they were standing nearby as i took it out of the cheap canvas cover i had on it, and it caught the sheath just right and rang almost like a bell, enough that my friends stopped mid-conversation and my one friends who was visiting the states on leave from the german military was like wait, let me see that, and ran off into the woods, in the dark and chopped down a small (dead ) tree about five inches around with it, the norse hawk does have a very thin wide blade so it makes sense, i do love the way it sounds!
Does anyone know where the "schwing" started? It's "Hollywood" now, but it seems like something that could have come out of radio drama too, as they tended to go for exaggerated sound effects. Even an onomatopoeia word balloon in a comic book or pulp novel seems possible. But all those things were kind of happening at the same time in the 20's, so it would be hard to tell. I also wonder if, even earlier than that, in stage plays, with light, flexy un-edged prop swords, actors might kind of zing them out of the scabbard with a little extra flourish when making a dramatic entrance. If you were actually trying to make a noise, and you weren't worried about dulling your edge on a metal scabbard throat, or nicking yourself with the tip on the way out, you could probably twist it a bit to get some spring tension going that would create a pretty distinct sound.
Is the 'shwing' more pronounced when drawing from worn rather than held scabbard? That feels like it could affect the angles and forces of the draw, as well as the resonance of at least and scabbard.
When I draw my favourite sword it makes the following sound: "Oh, not today, I'm tired, I don't want to come out and play and swinging me around makes me dizzy ... and you haven't cleaned me in a while ... and I just want to sleep." I don't listen of course
I tried a bunch of military antiques just now- it's mostly a clattering rattle but it depends on the condition of sword and scabbard and how you hold the scabbard when you draw is also very important too. One of the old sabres makes quite a ring, the others try.
I think the most interesting part of this for me - and one of the first things I came to understand when I got to handle real swords - is about the 'ring' part of that sound. In movies, swords often ring like a bell and that sound sustains for an age, almost like a triangle in an orchestra (and don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic sound that even part of me still wants to hear...). I don't think I have ever come across a sword blade that would actually ring like that. Some do a bit when you tap them, if the blade is relatively solid and very firm in its hilt. Some just go 'clack'. The one thing I do have that gives the right sound is a very chunky axe blade. That really does ring like a bell if you tap it. But the thing about bells is they are very thick, very solid - which most swords really aren't.
Fscinating 3:00 That's the sound of a spring getting released. 4:33 A fearsome sound. I can assure you, by personal experience, that you can also split the scabbard right in the palm of your left hand if your timing is off.
I had an early 20th century American saber with the original metal scabbard. The cushion or seal that kept rain water out had deteriorated away, and that sword made a schwing when I pulled it out.
The Swiss Schmidt-Rubin Engineer’s Sawback bayonet makes an almost crystalline schwing as it exits its metal scabbard. If you get the chance to try one, it’s quite remarkable.
I own a replica of a spadroon that has a metal scabbard that used to ring like a bell when you drew it. But as the hilt started separating where the grip meets the guard I had to modify it to hold the sword together and now it no longer rings. But it was definitely like the movie schwingg sounds
I think it's more likely that 'shwing' from modern cultural slang (Wayne notwithstanding) comes from western prisoners of war in the eastern campaign against the Japanese, with their metal scabbarded Gunto blades. Whether or not the blades/scabbards made a shwing sound, the sound they did make became something to fear, and the difficulty in translating the exact sound to an understandable word resulted in what we know and quibble about to this very day.
I’ve been under the impression that ringing steel is bad steel. I got the idea from a safety lecture in which they said that if a hammer rings when you strike with it, you should replace it before it shatters and hurts you. If so, the movie shwing sound as a combination of the “SH” sound of the blade dragging and the “RING” sound of bad steel. Thoughts?
I can't remember which video, but there was a hero's prop sword on Tested. It had a very distinctive schwing and even made Adam exclaim "It goes schwing!" So (prop) swords go schwing even without sound editing.
What I'm taking from this, from a storytelling point of view, is that a metallic noise should be employed when someone draws a sword if you want to convey that they're drawing in an excited state, such as hurried, enraged, surprised, or frightened. So a nervous medieval soldier might draw quickly and make a noise, while their battle-hardened leader -- say, a "paladin" type -- could draw calmly with no noise at all. Foley work helps tell the characters' states of mind. Sure, using the sound effect can be unrealistic, but I'm too busy being annoyed at swords stabbing through plate armor to worry about a little ringing steel. The "ringing" we should be worried about is arcing those blade tips around the 1mm+ thick breastplates toward the more fragile rings of mail.
I like the idea of someone like Sekiro (so a rogue that is used to killing people for a living) drawing a sword making almost no noise whatsoever, facing someone that has never used a sword before, that draws it making that schwing noise. I think that'd be cool in a narrative type of way
From a foley perspective, you'd want to have *some* sound for every action, unless the scene specifically calls for total silence. But you might indeed use a more subtle drawing sound for a character calmly drawing a sword than one doing it hastily or drawing (literally) in anger.
I own a British WWI bayonet which has the same sort of leaf-spring in the scabbard throat as the last saber shown. I have to draw it very slowly if I want to do so quietly. Drawing it normally produces that distinctive "SHWING"
I have an old training Chinese saber from when I did Kung Fu forms which makes a beautiful high pitched Hollywood style schwing that lasts a few seconds when it's drawn quickly. I wonder if that's where it comes from? Super lightweight training swords?
I did have a Jian custom made by Jin Shi forge that went shwing when drawn...that shwing happened as you said by a certain draw .......it was the best feeling, balanced, cutting sword I have ever owned. English is only spoken in our home and my kids call swords Dhab or a KA SHING!!
I have one of those flexible Chinese jian (wooden scabbard, metal throat) and that one does produce a loud, full Hollywood shwing sound, even resonating like a tuning fork seconds after being drawn. Since Hollywood has changed their sword sounds, is it possible that the later Foley sound perhaps was heavily influenced by the popularity of Hong Kong kung fu movies?
I have a steel cutlass that has what I believe is a scabbard stamped from the same steel (extremely heavy). At the very least, it has a steel lip with a steel belt loop. Viciously impractical, but when you draw that sucker it goes "schwing" and will continue ringing for several seconds. It's a beautiful sound. It being a relatively cheap sword I don't think that it was intentional, but it's not a stretch to believe such a thing could be constructed on purpose.
Lloyd's video got me into his channel for sure! And through that I found yours, Metatron, Skallagrim, and Shadiversity. His sword drawing video got me into the whole TH-cam HEMA/historic/medieval/swords community! Thanks Lloyd! 😁
When actually worn, I suppose there’s going to be a few buckles, buttons, strap ends and so forth in the vicinity that could cause a bit more of a ringing noise as the sword contacts them.
During that year-long camping trip paid by the state by all non-refusing male Finns, I did practice on how to make knives, hookbills and axes go schwing when picked up from a stock of wood. It drew the squad crazy.
All I know is that my Blucher Sabre most definitely makes the iconic "schwing" sound. Sounds like it is right out of the movies. I can use if for sound effects. It makes the perfect sound every time it is drawn.
Many WWI bayonets have a leaf spring retainer in the metal sheath that presses into the fuller. If you pull that out at just the right speed, it makes a very loud and distinctive swish-schwing sound as you pull it. A nice long one like my Argentine Mauser bayonet makes a really nice one if you practice, almost movie grade.
I used to have a cheap arming sword I could reliably "schwing". Leather sheath on it too. My guess is that the secret sauce for schwings are floppy blades made with modern alloys and heat treatment.
Ok, so I own a French Chassepot type bayonet, which has a metal scabbard. The blade rings like a tuning fork if you tap it against the scabbard. If you draw it the way you were doing with a slight twist you can draw it so it sings when drawn. Not as loudly as if you tap it, but still pretty clearly.
Is it generally desirable to make a sound or not to make a sound in HEMA/western swordsmanship? I practice Kenjutsu, and at least in the school I study it is considered desirable to make as little sound as possible when drawing. As I understand it, there are a number of reasons - including, but possibly not limited to: not alerting enemies in some situations, the idea that friction can slow you drawing the blade (however little), that it may blunt the blade, and the understanding that friction only arises if you have suboptimal alignment between the sword and scabbard while drawing and is therefore a sign of poor form. There is also an aspect of respect towards your sword, though I don't want to overstate it.
I have several swords that not only schwing, they ring true like a bell when drawn from a scabbard (...when there is a certain amount of lateral pressure in the drawing).
The Hollywood “schwing” is sort of like the Hollywood “click click” that all pistols and even some revolvers seem to make every single time they’re raised and pointed at someone. Every single time.
I believe this is a case of, the first person to make a sound for a sword being drawn became the "standard." Everyone who heard the first guy's work went "That's how we should do it then" and it became a self perpetuating phenomena as is often the case.
I have a ryoba, a Japanese pull-saw. If you so much look at it, Schwing! It totally sounds like a movie swordfight. I've seen an original ACW era musicians sword that rang really well if it got bashed, and the typical scabbed design has a brass ferroule which definitely gets the "sch" scrape. Similarly hearing the sound of a well drilled company fix bayonets or remove bayonets is spine chilling. I wonder if the movie trope comes from using whippy prop swords that might ring more like a saw?
My practice Chinese dao makes a wonderful *schwing!* sound when I draw it. Of course, it's a cheap peace of garbage made of stamped spring steel, and the wooden scabbard has a metal cuff around the sword fitting. I don't need to worry about dulling the blade (it's a butter knife), and the spring steel is so darn wobbly that it reverberates nicely as it scrapes free. That is the only sword I have had, real or practice version that makes an almost perfect movie sound when I draw it. For $100 US you too can make impressive movie sounds while drawing a sword! Just hope you don't need to actually use it in a swordfight (or any fight) once drawn! Though my 1878 bayonet makes a pretty nice sound too, but again, no edge, and it has an entirely metal scabbard.
Japanese ww2 officers sword with a button catch rings great, shop keeper also showed me the awesome flash of light as he drew it way too close to my face.
Many years ago, when I was involved in reenactment, I had a scabbard with a brass throat locket and top plate. When I drew the sword, it often screeched much worse than fingernails on a blackboard. I could make people cringe at quite a distance. 😂
Best watch "Le Colonel Chabert" - the battle of Eylau cavalry charge in the snow. The cuirasier regiment draws their sabres and charges. Very nice movie with Gerard Depardieu. The sabres make the right noise there. I know, have been a cavalry reenactorfor years and own a french cuirasier sabre.
To be honest I would not classify any of those sounds as a proper Hollywood schwiiiiing! But your conjecture on how the sound in Hollywood might have come to be is very interesting. Good job!
When it comes to Hollywood sound tropes, it can sound strange if the standard "rules" are broken because it's about fulfilling expectations. Another weird one that hardly anyone knows about it the sound frogs make. Real frogs, depending on species, make any of hundreds of different kinds of sounds, but all frogs in Hollyood films, regardless of location in the narrative, make the same ribbit sound, which is specifically the sound that is only made by the common kind of frogs you have in California.
Extremely interesting!! It provides an important indication of where the "shwing" noise from Hollywood productions might have originated. The early Western genre filmmakers actually at least sometimes consulted with the actual gunslingers of the Old West, because some of them were still around when films were being produced in the 1910s and '20s. People in those times would have been intimately familiar with horses (the most common means of transportation for most people across the world into the 1940s and beyond) and cavalry. It seems Hollywood got a lot of things wrong about the late 19th Century and otherwise even though people who had actually lived in that period advised them. They probably cared about other things than accuracy. Shame.
Sound effects for all sorts of weapons are off in Hollywood. From assault weapons that make bolt cycling sounds whenever they're so much as touched to tanks whose tracks sound like a cement mixer full of spanners. I'm sure the foley artists are aware of what they're doing, maybe they things it adds something.... like the gasps and sighs in the audio track whenever an anime character's expression changes.
People knocked into chasms usually don't trigger the Wilhelm screams either but being a Foley artist is typically about heightening and placing emphasis on aspects of reality to add drama to the story, not necessarily any attempt to simulate it faithfully.
I believe it is stock sound effects that don't change. Sometimes it's added more as a thing to be done than needed. Look up the Wilhelm scream and see how long and often it was used. I might be added today just as a nod to the old work. Most of the sounds from bullets are not real. Beau L'Amour set up mics in a wooden building and they shot various 19th century guns into the building which sounds totally different most film audios.
Sadly that's going to be true more and more as movies use airsoft guns and VFX to substitute for guns. Just write the stories without guns if you can't use guns, set all the cop dramas in Norway for realism then. Because airsoft guns are like having a romance scene with fully clothed actors with a post-it on the chest saying "IMAGINE CANS HERE."
Sounds like a new metric is necessary for judging the schwingyness of a found, possibly measured in Eastons, from zero Easton schwing to 1 Easton schwing for the Katana and 2 Eastons or upwards for different type of sabres.
My brother-in-law has a cavalry saber, not sure what type though I assume it is something American, and every time it draws it does indeed make a clattering sound. I rather wonder why it is so noisy and if it has something to do with the sword or scabbard construction.
I have one that does. If I try, I can ring it like a bell. It's a reproduction Magyar/Hungarian saber with a thin, flexible, springy blade. Not Prince Valiant's "singing sword" but nice enough.
i get the impression that in order to make a holliwood shwing noise, you'd need to drag the tip of a sword across the side and off the edge of a small metal plate. like dragging sheetmetal strips against other sheet metal. i also assume that realism was never their goal, but to create a "symbol". something anyone could know meant a sword was drawn even when blindfolded.
The first few moments of the vid had me VERY excited about the new windlass royal armouries basket hilt... and then utterly depressed as I saw that it isn't symmetrical. As a southpaw... well, you get it. I'll go cry in that corner over there.
Reminds me of the gun sounds in movies; everything has 1911 sounds, clicking and safety noise and cocking. All shotguns rack, even if they are not pump action. Drives me nuts.
So, since I started wearing loafers, I started carrying a shoe horn. And well, taking that shoehorn out of the pocket of my oilcloth duster, or even quickly running it across the oilcloth, makes an almost perfect match to the Hollywood stock schwing.
I have a steel spatula with a wooden handle that makes an amazing "SCHWING" sound when I draw it across my marble counter. I bet Foley artist use something similar for sword sounds in movies.
I’ve found many WW1 bayonets, some US military latin pattern machetes and the German Hitler Youth knives make the Hollywood schwing. The bayonets and knives have steel scabbards with leaf springs. The machetes often have plastic sheaths, sometimes with a steel throat.
i thought only Wayne and Garth go "schwing" 😉
Party time!
Excellent @@allmachtsdaggl5109
Beat me to it. Wayne's World was the first thing I thought of.
@@seifer447 same
Schaaaawiiiing!
As a German speaker, this is highly confusing. "schwing" in German means "swing!", lol
Hey I'm not the only one who had to read it multiple times lol
Schwing!
google "Waynes World Schwing" if you want to be even more confused 🙃
It don't mean a thing if it ain't got that Schwing!
@@beepboop204 Hahaha!
"Party on Matt!"
"Party on Lloyd!"
There is a famous incident that happened at the time of the American Civil War. A cavalry regiment had been training without sabers (they having not been issued), the day came for a review by the higher ups, Model 1860 Cavalry Sabers (steel scabbards) were issued, the men (and horses) having never handled them before. The regiment was drawn up in formation and the order came, "Draw Sabers", the ensuing mayhem caused by the noise of the sabers being drawn sent the horses wild, running and throwing riders. Needless to say, the review was over and it took the rest of the day to round up wayward horses and tend to injured men. I'd say the "Schwing" definitely was heard.
The Model 1860 is what I immediately think of when I think of scabbards making noise.
it may depend on the sword for sure.
I teared something like a Shwing in real life in Romania when I took a photo whith an Austrohungarian reinacter, who drew his saber and made a sound, not like the movie one, a drier kind of sound but definitely a shwing. I can hear a similar sound watching old romanian period films where you can tell they didn't add extra sounds to the scene. The sounds swords do in those movies are as Matt said, loud but not fully a shwing. But both in real life and in those movies I heared a type of dry sound more similar to a movie Shwing, whithout the ringing at the end
@@malahamavet It's the Snikt!
@@malahamavetI have a few antique sword that still have their metal scabbards and they all make noise. One makes a very perfect Schwing sound.
More rattle and swish than schwing.
My favorite of this trope is the "quiet" or maybe "implied" schwing. Usually low-budget Japanese but sometimes Chinese. The scene is something like: ruffians are picking on some lone person, like a vagabond-looking dude or a little girl. At first it's just taunting but then someone pulls a knife or gets a rope. Person quietly, probably with just their thumb, frees their sword from its scabbard, just a few millimeters. It makes a very slight rasping sound, and maybe the blade glints. Queue first big action scene. Sometimes they'll change it up and an outside force makes the bandits run off, while the person quietly resheathes.
I like the version of this where the "shwinger" has to move very slowly, or else their shwing is too loud and they will be caught swording about where they oughtnt
the ol' thumb on the tsuba "*chk*" noise is a favourite anime trope of mine
The reason why most Hollywood sound designs aren't realistic is that the sounds remind the audience is a better way to communicate, the feeling of the thing than the actual sound of the thing what it would sound realistically.
for sure, movie sound design is a really important part of conveying mood and tone and story, etc. really, there's plenty of even more pedestrian sound design that is equally or even more "unrealistic" but is important for the storytelling but no one quibbles about because it doesn't fall under the category of some sort of knowledge that someone can feel a little haughty about "knowing better" about.
Yeah. The thing is that real life is often not helpfully signposted. Movies and other media are all about symbols and signals. Real life does not provide these, any more than what you learn to look for yourself. For a person who is not deeply versed in something like this, using swords (both sound-wise and even just visually) can be very underwhelming or seem like not much is even happening. A movie (that isn't specifically trying to be some really niche expertise thing on the subject) will benefit way more from being easy to parse for anyone at all used to the conventions of movies, rather than high fidelity.
For a person who does not know much about sword fighting, a fairly intense and technical duel might look like two people scrabbling around each other with sharp metal sticks, until one gets lightly tapped and seems to just fall down. Putting his in a movie, just raw as is, would be very... underwhelming at best. And the same for sound; having the movie just be 100% plausible sound effects would be very hard to even focus on, since it's all muddled and mostly rather muted.
(And yes, of course an expert will draw much more meaning from any of this. But most moviegoers are not, and should not be required to be, experts on any given subject just to understand the actual narrative in a film that is not specifically trying to represent the specific activity/thing as the main topic of the movie.)
The awkward part is, of course, how this can then twist understanding of the subject with various misconceptions and urban legends, but I do not find it very fruitful to strive for high degree of fidelity at the expense of losing signals that are actually parseable for a normal person.
Yeah and people born as men have weiners. Doesn't mean that can't change
Wow what a call back. The world really has changed in the past 16 years, I just had a HEMA student I worked with that was not even born when that video was released :D
On a similar topic - my mate Clive who served in the Army says he heard maybe 2 or 3 ricochets during his whole time in it, target practice and live shooting and all. Compare any movie of every era.
To be fair, in target practice shooting you set up the targets in such a way to prevent ricochets from happening. Because bullets that come back are equally deadly.
I've heard plenty of ricochets, they're scary "hit the deck" noises.
"Memoirs of an Irish Sharpshooter" by Richard O'Shea
I'm convinced that the main driving force behind the exploration of the American West was the need to find places with the right kind of rocks and a good echo to have your gunfights in!
But some movies do a good job of portraying the sound of richochets. Much easier to hear shooting suppressed, especially .22 lr and hitting an hard object.
🎵 It don't mean a thing, if it ain't got that schwing. 🤺 🎶
Its the tip vibrating when leaving the scabard in a bend, resulting in resonation, the same basic principle as hitting a tuning fork or piece of steels or when tipping a ruler with your finger when held on the side of a hard surface like a table, the certain size and flexibility and length of the ruler, or swordblade in this case, makes a note of certain hight, moving the ruler to and from the hard surface changes the length of the ruler and thus hight of the tone.
Swords go "schwing!" whenever they meet a sexy scabbard. 😍🤡
Boi-oi-oi-oing. Watching too many Beavis and Butthead clips recently. This resonated with me.
Lol!
@@LegalSC Wayne and Garth actually. :P
Mine does ...
Fun fact: The word 'vagina' comes from the latin word for 'scabbard'.
The reasoning behind it being probably the same as that behind your comment.
From a few pieces a Friend and I were comparing found that the "Schwing" was most influenced between what ever the 'throat' of the scabbard has around it and how it interacts with the blade.
A metal topmount around the throat that hits a blade thin enough to vibrate will ring when drawn a certain way, while a thicker blade or one that has not metal topmount ring around the throat doesn't schwing. The Buddy's wife had a few Han-jian and hers made wildly different noises between the antler throated one, the brass throated one and the all wood scabbard. The Brass one didn't Schwing at all because it was made with a thicker more ridged blade, so that makes me think the blade has some influence.
You know things are about to get real when your sword starts talking german
Party on, Matt.
My guy, a professional sword dealer, HEMA fencer, and historical weapons and combat expert Matt Easton, responding to a 10 year old lindybeige video so he can play around by drawing swords and listening for a ring. Absolutely Chad move 10/10.
Funny enough, i have a tomahawk, a cold steel norse hawk, and years ago i went camping with some friends, and they were standing nearby as i took it out of the cheap canvas cover i had on it, and it caught the sheath just right and rang almost like a bell, enough that my friends stopped mid-conversation and my one friends who was visiting the states on leave from the german military was like wait, let me see that, and ran off into the woods, in the dark and chopped down a small (dead ) tree about five inches around with it, the norse hawk does have a very thin wide blade so it makes sense, i do love the way it sounds!
I'd love to hear that!
I have a Norse hawk 🤘💀 can confirm it rings like a bell.
Beautiful little axe, sharpened mine into a sweet backyard cutter.
Grear for throwing as well
Perhaps a better"sound effect" of drawn swords is in Kipling's poem Edgehill Fight:
"The first dry rattle of new-drawn steel
Changes the world today!"
I hope Lindy makes a overdramatic response to this video :)
Does anyone know where the "schwing" started? It's "Hollywood" now, but it seems like something that could have come out of radio drama too, as they tended to go for exaggerated sound effects. Even an onomatopoeia word balloon in a comic book or pulp novel seems possible. But all those things were kind of happening at the same time in the 20's, so it would be hard to tell.
I also wonder if, even earlier than that, in stage plays, with light, flexy un-edged prop swords, actors might kind of zing them out of the scabbard with a little extra flourish when making a dramatic entrance. If you were actually trying to make a noise, and you weren't worried about dulling your edge on a metal scabbard throat, or nicking yourself with the tip on the way out, you could probably twist it a bit to get some spring tension going that would create a pretty distinct sound.
Is the 'shwing' more pronounced when drawing from worn rather than held scabbard? That feels like it could affect the angles and forces of the draw, as well as the resonance of at least and scabbard.
Even when wearing a sword, the scabbard is held with your off hand when you draw.
Everyone knows swords only go snicker snack! 😀
Depends on whether the vorpal blade is a sword or a knife (as in American McGee's Alice). :P
Only the Vorpal Sword.
@@seanheath4492 Oh drat. You beat me.😊
When I draw my favourite sword it makes the following sound: "Oh, not today, I'm tired, I don't want to come out and play and swinging me around makes me dizzy ... and you haven't cleaned me in a while ... and I just want to sleep." I don't listen of course
I tried a bunch of military antiques just now- it's mostly a clattering rattle but it depends on the condition of sword and scabbard and how you hold the scabbard when you draw is also very important too. One of the old sabres makes quite a ring, the others try.
I think the most interesting part of this for me - and one of the first things I came to understand when I got to handle real swords - is about the 'ring' part of that sound. In movies, swords often ring like a bell and that sound sustains for an age, almost like a triangle in an orchestra (and don't get me wrong, it's a fantastic sound that even part of me still wants to hear...). I don't think I have ever come across a sword blade that would actually ring like that. Some do a bit when you tap them, if the blade is relatively solid and very firm in its hilt. Some just go 'clack'. The one thing I do have that gives the right sound is a very chunky axe blade. That really does ring like a bell if you tap it. But the thing about bells is they are very thick, very solid - which most swords really aren't.
Fscinating
3:00 That's the sound of a spring getting released.
4:33 A fearsome sound. I can assure you, by personal experience, that you can also split the scabbard right in the palm of your left hand if your timing is off.
I had an early 20th century American saber with the original metal scabbard. The cushion or seal that kept rain water out had deteriorated away, and that sword made a schwing when I pulled it out.
Oh cool, you're talking about it. The inside was wooden on mine. And the fact that the seal was gone, made it schwing.
Great video but when will the sword you are holding be available for purchase because I must have it!
The Swiss Schmidt-Rubin Engineer’s Sawback bayonet makes an almost crystalline schwing as it exits its metal scabbard. If you get the chance to try one, it’s quite remarkable.
I own a replica of a spadroon that has a metal scabbard that used to ring like a bell when you drew it. But as the hilt started separating where the grip meets the guard I had to modify it to hold the sword together and now it no longer rings.
But it was definitely like the movie schwingg sounds
I think it's more likely that 'shwing' from modern cultural slang (Wayne notwithstanding) comes from western prisoners of war in the eastern campaign against the Japanese, with their metal scabbarded Gunto blades.
Whether or not the blades/scabbards made a shwing sound, the sound they did make became something to fear, and the difficulty in translating the exact sound to an understandable word resulted in what we know and quibble about to this very day.
I’ve been under the impression that ringing steel is bad steel. I got the idea from a safety lecture in which they said that if a hammer rings when you strike with it, you should replace it before it shatters and hurts you. If so, the movie shwing sound as a combination of the “SH” sound of the blade dragging and the “RING” sound of bad steel. Thoughts?
That early basket hilt prototype looks fantastic! Any guess as to when we might see those on the market?
I can't remember which video, but there was a hero's prop sword on Tested. It had a very distinctive schwing and even made Adam exclaim "It goes schwing!" So (prop) swords go schwing even without sound editing.
It is nice that lindybeige has been posting more
What I'm taking from this, from a storytelling point of view, is that a metallic noise should be employed when someone draws a sword if you want to convey that they're drawing in an excited state, such as hurried, enraged, surprised, or frightened. So a nervous medieval soldier might draw quickly and make a noise, while their battle-hardened leader -- say, a "paladin" type -- could draw calmly with no noise at all. Foley work helps tell the characters' states of mind.
Sure, using the sound effect can be unrealistic, but I'm too busy being annoyed at swords stabbing through plate armor to worry about a little ringing steel. The "ringing" we should be worried about is arcing those blade tips around the 1mm+ thick breastplates toward the more fragile rings of mail.
I like the idea of someone like Sekiro (so a rogue that is used to killing people for a living) drawing a sword making almost no noise whatsoever, facing someone that has never used a sword before, that draws it making that schwing noise. I think that'd be cool in a narrative type of way
From a foley perspective, you'd want to have *some* sound for every action, unless the scene specifically calls for total silence. But you might indeed use a more subtle drawing sound for a character calmly drawing a sword than one doing it hastily or drawing (literally) in anger.
Is that Royal Arnouries IX.1404, by chance?
A9 hilt of Mazansky typology?
I own a British WWI bayonet which has the same sort of leaf-spring in the scabbard throat as the last saber shown. I have to draw it very slowly if I want to do so quietly. Drawing it normally produces that distinctive "SHWING"
My pat.1907 does exactly this 🙂
Many WWI bayonets do it really well to, especially the long ones like my Argentine Mauser! I learned to make that thing practically Hollywood schwing
I have an old training Chinese saber from when I did Kung Fu forms which makes a beautiful high pitched Hollywood style schwing that lasts a few seconds when it's drawn quickly. I wonder if that's where it comes from? Super lightweight training swords?
Maybe a later metal scabbard might but it depends on how tight a fit it is and what it is made from but usualy it is a special effect used in movies
I did have a Jian custom made by Jin Shi forge that went shwing when drawn...that shwing happened as you said by a certain draw .......it was the best feeling, balanced, cutting sword I have ever owned.
English is only spoken in our home and my kids call swords Dhab or a KA SHING!!
I have one of those flexible Chinese jian (wooden scabbard, metal throat) and that one does produce a loud, full Hollywood shwing sound, even resonating like a tuning fork seconds after being drawn.
Since Hollywood has changed their sword sounds, is it possible that the later Foley sound perhaps was heavily influenced by the popularity of Hong Kong kung fu movies?
I have a steel cutlass that has what I believe is a scabbard stamped from the same steel (extremely heavy). At the very least, it has a steel lip with a steel belt loop. Viciously impractical, but when you draw that sucker it goes "schwing" and will continue ringing for several seconds. It's a beautiful sound. It being a relatively cheap sword I don't think that it was intentional, but it's not a stretch to believe such a thing could be constructed on purpose.
I have Czechoslovak sabre vz.24 which my grandpa had as police member before WWII. And it does nice steel/steel noise when drawn.
I got a small fixed blade edc that goes a little bit "shwing" when I yank it out. 🤭
(Thickly coated 1095 full steel construction on Kydex sheath.)
Lloyd's video got me into his channel for sure! And through that I found yours, Metatron, Skallagrim, and Shadiversity. His sword drawing video got me into the whole TH-cam HEMA/historic/medieval/swords community!
Thanks Lloyd! 😁
Shad sux
I have a metal scabbard bayonet from a mauser. It most certainly rings when you draw it out. Maybe it's a resonant length thing.
When actually worn, I suppose there’s going to be a few buckles, buttons, strap ends and so forth in the vicinity that could cause a bit more of a ringing noise as the sword contacts them.
If you withdraw a sword from stone will it be a schwinging soard?
During that year-long camping trip paid by the state by all non-refusing male Finns, I did practice on how to make knives, hookbills and axes go schwing when picked up from a stock of wood. It drew the squad crazy.
Haha. Finns going on camping trips make Russians nervous
All I know is that my Blucher Sabre most definitely makes the iconic "schwing" sound. Sounds like it is right out of the movies. I can use if for sound effects. It makes the perfect sound every time it is drawn.
What sword is that at the start of the video? I would like to add one to my collection.
I want more info on that basket hilt. That is going on the must buy list
Many WWI bayonets have a leaf spring retainer in the metal sheath that presses into the fuller. If you pull that out at just the right speed, it makes a very loud and distinctive swish-schwing sound as you pull it. A nice long one like my Argentine Mauser bayonet makes a really nice one if you practice, almost movie grade.
I used to have a cheap arming sword I could reliably "schwing". Leather sheath on it too. My guess is that the secret sauce for schwings are floppy blades made with modern alloys and heat treatment.
Ok, so I own a French Chassepot type bayonet, which has a metal scabbard. The blade rings like a tuning fork if you tap it against the scabbard. If you draw it the way you were doing with a slight twist you can draw it so it sings when drawn. Not as loudly as if you tap it, but still pretty clearly.
Is it generally desirable to make a sound or not to make a sound in HEMA/western swordsmanship?
I practice Kenjutsu, and at least in the school I study it is considered desirable to make as little sound as possible when drawing.
As I understand it, there are a number of reasons - including, but possibly not limited to: not alerting enemies in some situations, the idea that friction can slow you drawing the blade (however little), that it may blunt the blade, and the understanding that friction only arises if you have suboptimal alignment between the sword and scabbard while drawing and is therefore a sign of poor form. There is also an aspect of respect towards your sword, though I don't want to overstate it.
I have several swords that not only schwing, they ring true like a bell when drawn from a scabbard (...when there is a certain amount of lateral pressure in the drawing).
would your hand on the scabbard be dampening the sound ?
OK how do we make this shwing noise happen? I mean if I dilibratly make to do so...
Matt, may I ask who the maker of your reproduction katana is? Northshire?
The Hollywood “schwing” is sort of like the Hollywood “click click” that all pistols and even some revolvers seem to make every single time they’re raised and pointed at someone. Every single time.
I believe this is a case of, the first person to make a sound for a sword being drawn became the "standard." Everyone who heard the first guy's work went "That's how we should do it then" and it became a self perpetuating phenomena as is often the case.
I have a ryoba, a Japanese pull-saw. If you so much look at it, Schwing! It totally sounds like a movie swordfight.
I've seen an original ACW era musicians sword that rang really well if it got bashed, and the typical scabbed design has a brass ferroule which definitely gets the "sch" scrape. Similarly hearing the sound of a well drilled company fix bayonets or remove bayonets is spine chilling.
I wonder if the movie trope comes from using whippy prop swords that might ring more like a saw?
Was so nervous for matt's hand in this video. But he knows what he's doing.
So, if coming out it depends on the conditions how loud it will get
My practice Chinese dao makes a wonderful *schwing!* sound when I draw it. Of course, it's a cheap peace of garbage made of stamped spring steel, and the wooden scabbard has a metal cuff around the sword fitting. I don't need to worry about dulling the blade (it's a butter knife), and the spring steel is so darn wobbly that it reverberates nicely as it scrapes free. That is the only sword I have had, real or practice version that makes an almost perfect movie sound when I draw it.
For $100 US you too can make impressive movie sounds while drawing a sword! Just hope you don't need to actually use it in a swordfight (or any fight) once drawn!
Though my 1878 bayonet makes a pretty nice sound too, but again, no edge, and it has an entirely metal scabbard.
Japanese ww2 officers sword with a button catch rings great, shop keeper also showed me the awesome flash of light as he drew it way too close to my face.
In Frank Miller's _Elektra Assassins_ he created the memorable line "sibilant hiss" of a katana being drawn from a wood saya.
Many years ago, when I was involved in reenactment, I had a scabbard with a brass throat locket and top plate. When I drew the sword, it often screeched much worse than fingernails on a blackboard. I could make people cringe at quite a distance. 😂
Tried to take a shot everyone Matt said "shwing"...
Just woke up in the hospital....
Best watch "Le Colonel Chabert" - the battle of Eylau cavalry charge in the snow.
The cuirasier regiment draws their sabres and charges. Very nice movie with Gerard Depardieu. The sabres make the right noise there. I know, have been a cavalry reenactorfor years and own a french cuirasier sabre.
So, it's basically more like a "Shwuck" than a "Shwing". Thoroughly enjoyed the video, what a time to be alive!
Most swords don't go 'schwing!'... but it's much cooler when they do!
"Hey man, got a joint??"
"No..."
"Be a lot cooler if you diiiid"
To be honest I would not classify any of those sounds as a proper Hollywood schwiiiiing! But your conjecture on how the sound in Hollywood might have come to be is very interesting. Good job!
When it comes to Hollywood sound tropes, it can sound strange if the standard "rules" are broken because it's about fulfilling expectations. Another weird one that hardly anyone knows about it the sound frogs make. Real frogs, depending on species, make any of hundreds of different kinds of sounds, but all frogs in Hollyood films, regardless of location in the narrative, make the same ribbit sound, which is specifically the sound that is only made by the common kind of frogs you have in California.
Extremely interesting!! It provides an important indication of where the "shwing" noise from Hollywood productions might have originated. The early Western genre filmmakers actually at least sometimes consulted with the actual gunslingers of the Old West, because some of them were still around when films were being produced in the 1910s and '20s. People in those times would have been intimately familiar with horses (the most common means of transportation for most people across the world into the 1940s and beyond) and cavalry. It seems Hollywood got a lot of things wrong about the late 19th Century and otherwise even though people who had actually lived in that period advised them. They probably cared about other things than accuracy. Shame.
Sound effects for all sorts of weapons are off in Hollywood. From assault weapons that make bolt cycling sounds whenever they're so much as touched to tanks whose tracks sound like a cement mixer full of spanners. I'm sure the foley artists are aware of what they're doing, maybe they things it adds something.... like the gasps and sighs in the audio track whenever an anime character's expression changes.
An Italian Trooper Cavalry Saber model 1960. You should do a review on that.
People knocked into chasms usually don't trigger the Wilhelm screams either but being a Foley artist is typically about heightening and placing emphasis on aspects of reality to add drama to the story, not necessarily any attempt to simulate it faithfully.
I believe it is stock sound effects that don't change. Sometimes it's added more as a thing to be done than needed. Look up the Wilhelm scream and see how long and often it was used. I might be added today just as a nod to the old work. Most of the sounds from bullets are not real. Beau L'Amour set up mics in a wooden building and they shot various 19th century guns into the building which sounds totally different most film audios.
Sadly that's going to be true more and more as movies use airsoft guns and VFX to substitute for guns. Just write the stories without guns if you can't use guns, set all the cop dramas in Norway for realism then. Because airsoft guns are like having a romance scene with fully clothed actors with a post-it on the chest saying "IMAGINE CANS HERE."
Sounds like a new metric is necessary for judging the schwingyness of a found, possibly measured in Eastons, from zero Easton schwing to 1 Easton schwing for the Katana and 2 Eastons or upwards for different type of sabres.
My brother-in-law has a cavalry saber, not sure what type though I assume it is something American, and every time it draws it does indeed make a clattering sound. I rather wonder why it is so noisy and if it has something to do with the sword or scabbard construction.
Unfortunately I don't have a source at hand but I recall reading that this sound effect is actually a holdover from the days of radio dramas.
I have one that does. If I try, I can ring it like a bell. It's a reproduction Magyar/Hungarian saber with a thin, flexible, springy blade. Not Prince Valiant's "singing sword" but nice enough.
How to make a mace go "schwing"?
the worst movie sound FX for swords was Prince Valiant starring a young Robert Wagner "the Singing Sword"
I had to check. My Katana makes no noise until I sheath and it goes , ding !
This very topic was how I found this channel in the first case.
i get the impression that in order to make a holliwood shwing noise, you'd need to drag the tip of a sword across the side and off the edge of a small metal plate. like dragging sheetmetal strips against other sheet metal. i also assume that realism was never their goal, but to create a "symbol". something anyone could know meant a sword was drawn even when blindfolded.
Well some swords go schwing, others though go full swag!😁
"Schwing!" -Wayne
Boi-oi-oing! - Butthead
Even if inaccurate, the opening scene from the 1970s "The Three Musketeers", a sword being drawn, is a favorite of mine.
When he did the video on Chinese guard it did that schwing sound when he sheath and drawing the sword
What are the grimaces in the thumbnails for? :(
The first few moments of the vid had me VERY excited about the new windlass royal armouries basket hilt... and then utterly depressed as I saw that it isn't symmetrical. As a southpaw... well, you get it. I'll go cry in that corner over there.
Reminds me of the gun sounds in movies; everything has 1911 sounds, clicking and safety noise and cocking. All shotguns rack, even if they are not pump action. Drives me nuts.
So, since I started wearing loafers, I started carrying a shoe horn. And well, taking that shoehorn out of the pocket of my oilcloth duster, or even quickly running it across the oilcloth, makes an almost perfect match to the Hollywood stock schwing.
I have a steel spatula with a wooden handle that makes an amazing "SCHWING" sound when I draw it across my marble counter. I bet Foley artist use something similar for sword sounds in movies.
love the asmr tag on this lol
I’ve found many WW1 bayonets, some US military latin pattern machetes and the German Hitler Youth knives make the Hollywood schwing. The bayonets and knives have steel scabbards with leaf springs. The machetes often have plastic sheaths, sometimes with a steel throat.