Why does swing sound so "good" ?

[dirty oscillators]

I provided the example of how and where Miles Davis got his information; listening to records, trying to get time playing with other musicians, learning theory with Dizzy Gillespie. Maybe I should have also mentioned that Miles studied at Juilliard just to ram the message home. I gave the example of how Alan Dawson educated his students. Maybe I should have also mentioned that Alan Dawson taught at Berklee College of Music and that Tony Williams was a student of his while there.

what's your point???

you're not explaining why "swing sounds so good" and in fact, you sound like some stuffy professor type and not so much like an artist.

spouting off a bunch of music history lessons doesn't prove that you had already said, "It's a type of rhythm where the second of each pair of eighth notes (the off beats) is delayed by an amount at your discretion" so i don't get where you're coming from. are you trying to garner self esteem for yourself by thinking that you are impressing everyone?

I didn't spout a music history lesson. I gave examples of how well known talented and accomplished musicians went about learning swing. The message should be that the greats should be referred to when trying to understand the reason swing sounds good, and not a fractured written definition of swing.

As for my reference to nuffink's comment, I responded to the meaning of his complete statement, unlike you who are reacting to a portion of his words.

i'm sure plenty of "the greats" didn't learn swing from somewhere like Berkely College. Dizzy Gillespie learned trumpet on his own at an early age.

it's like you keep repeating the same thing, that swing is a convoluted and complicated skill that can only be learned from studying at a college and i disagree with you on this. i do agree that a simple definition might not completely explain what swing means, but isn't this true with music in general?

i understand Nuffink's point of view much better than yours and i say that meaning no offense to you.

[dirty oscillators]

Yes, you're right, one can do that. And that is why I said that no definition of swing is definitive. I also said that if one is going to provide a definition it should be presented within the context of something, otherwise the definition alone would be misleading. It would be misleading because definitions sound, well, definite--they sound complete. The tendency is for people to stop looking once they've found a simple answer. Simple answers give people the sense that they have control. However, there are no simple definitive answers when it comes to learning swing.

There are no easy answers. - This goes not just for swing, but for many, if not almost all aspects of music. - It cannot easily be explained on paper, it would be boring if it could. However, you can provide guidelines and overall statements about the general basics of a concept. - And, thus, as long as you make it clear that your definition is only that (i.e., not a scientific certainty), then yes, you can define it. (Broadly speaking).

Swing has been defined on this thread countless times, in countless ways. - Almost all of these are correct. - Swing, like many things, is not an exact science that can be explained exhaustively on paper, but general guidelines (that are very useful to newbies) can be given.

As far as I can tell, both of you now agree on this, so I am at a loss as to what you are actually arguing about.

i think this is the reason why Nuffink felt that the only way to explain it was in simplistic terms. otherwise you could go on forever repeating yourself and talking in circles and saying that no definition of swing is definitive.

and i think the reason that Ubiety keeps defending himself ("arguing") is because he can't accept a simple definition and wants to pick apart things and detail out everything in a convoluted way. maybe he's OCD, i don't know...

[Toxikator]

Maybe he's OCD, i don't know...

...and then again, maybe this is KVR

[Sascha Franck]

And that is why I said that no definition of swing is definitive.

I'm sorry, but there is a defenitive definition
Please note (and this seems to be confusing quite some people in this thread...): When talking about "swing", there's two sorts of it.
One being the definition of a technical thing. That's delaying the offbeat 8ths or 16ths by whatever amount. This is a very defenitive description of swing as a technique, and it's also the very same way sequencers and the likes are dealing with the issue.
The second sort of swing is the swing style. Obviously, a lot more than just delaying offbeat 8ths has to be done to master it. And a lot more can be said about what's happening as well. But these things, such as accents, timing variations and phrasings don't have anything to do with the technical meaning of swing. And they're part of many other musical styles as well. It's just that the combination of the "swing technique" and these other ingredients make up for the quality of swing music.

However, there's a very well defined basic definition of swing as a technique. And that's delayed 8th (or 16th) beats, no matter how much you don't like this answer.

[Sascha Franck]

And btw, some of you folks are really confusing swing as a technique and swing as a musical style.
When looking at the original post, it's almost clear that the technique is meant...

[Ubiety]

The bottom line is that I said, in so many words, that multiple approaches are needed in order for one to understand why swing sounds good. Actually it's the second time that I said those exact words. And in the course of explaining I gave examples of people who learned not only in college, which meant that it's possible that they studied with some professor of nuffink's bearing, but also on the stand through the tutelage and encouragement of other musicians who were more accomplished than they were. I didn't reduce to a single technical explanation because the person that started this thread referred to swing SOUNDING GOOD. To me that means that a written definition of technique does not go far enough to answer the question. It's not that I don't like what nuffink said, it's that what he said was not enough of an explanation all by itself--even his first post doesn't go far enough. My responses were in light of the question that headed this thread, which is, "Why does swing sound so "good"? The contexts are "swing" and "sound" with an emphasis on "good". One cannot answer this question objectively, even though objective criteria may be used in part to answer. The best way to answer is in a way that leads the author to form his own subjective viewpoint and opinion.

There's no need for an apology because you did not offend, Sascha. All you have to do is listen.

Same goes for you, dirty oscillators, listen. Your final two replies make so much mess out of simple explanations it's mind boggling. You agree and then disagree with me. Just gather yourself, you were right to agree the first time. And what you have said about jazz musicians and Berklee is just beyond ridiculous, clearly you have no idea what you are talking about. Plenty have built strong foundations from the fundamentals of swing taught there. You might as well say that plenty of classical musicians didn't learn classical music at Juilliard because Bach learned to play organ in a church in Germany.

[Sascha Franck]

I didn't reduce to a single technical explanation because the person that started this thread referred to swing SOUNDING GOOD. To me that means that a written definition of technique does not go far enough to answer the question.

Well, IMO no written definition of *any* technique will ever explain properly why *anything* sounds "so good", but as far as the original question goes, I think it was indeed the "technical swing" that was applied to whatever material that sounded so good. Not much of a connection to swing as a musical style - at least it seemed to me like that.

As far as the "why?" goes, it's of course still tough to explain, even only considering the simple process of delaying whatever offbeat notes by whatever amount.
The only explanation I would have is that delaying some even numbered rhythmical values (and yes, that might even apply to a snare on beats 2 and 4, not only to some smaller divisions) is probably making us feel more relaxed. The same goes for accenting even numbered rhythmical values. Clapping on 2 and 4 gives a more "open", "relaxed" and whatever feeling than clapping on 1 and 3 (which is why I just HATE living in germany, people are almost exclusively clapping on 1 and 3 over here, at best they clap on all quarters). Maybe "swing sounding so good" is sort of related to that. Otherwise I wouldn't happen to have the slightest idea about an explanation.

[opia]

The bottom line is that I said, in so many words, that multiple approaches are needed in order for one to understand why swing sounds good.

oh yes
one could spend minutes..hours..days..even years totally comprehending the many many intricate reasons why swing sounds good

[aciddose]

Well, IMO no written definition of *any* technique will ever explain properly why *anything* sounds "so good"

did you read my post where i explained that?

[Sascha Franck]

did you read my post where i explained that?

I think I did.

[aciddose]

i had actually hoped one of the three (was it four?) posts i made would set off some discussion of "why goes swing sound so good?" rather than "what is the whole story of semantics with regard to the word 'swing'"

of course people love to debate semantics..

[Sascha Franck]

i had actually hoped one of the three (was it four?) posts i made would set off some discussion of "why goes swing sound so good?" rather than "what is the whole story of semantics with regard to the word 'swing'"

Yes, that'd be nice. And it'd be even better if someone could come up with some concrete examples.

of course people love to debate semantics..

Well, personally, I can only say that debating semantics isn't my forte. I mean, english isn't my native language, so why even bother?

[aciddose]

well very simple examples are:

straight: quarters on C4, eighths on C6, whole on C1 (used to sync the logger)

http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/straight.mp3

shuffle: same pattern as straight, only every odd 16th during every odd beat (quarter) is dropped resulting in only three beats at the same tempo. this is the typical method to do this, but the important thing is just that the tempo is doubled every odd beat.

http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/shuffle.mp3

swing: same pattern as straight, only every third sixteenth is dropped, being replaced with the second eighth. this is again, the typical way to do this, but the only important factor here is that the tempo is doubled during every odd sixteenth.

http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/swing.mp3

those are the most basic forms of rhythmic modulation. why do they sound "good" compared to the straight rhythm? my theory is that the modulated patterns are better at activating our pattern recognition systems.

does anybody want to post more examples of basic rhythms? i've only covered three configurations here out of hundreds. the source i used was xhip with this patch http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/be.adxi into http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/vstlogger.dll using energy xt. i should get my tracker source code out and build a very basic sequencer for this.

if those clips have bored you, you can listen to this on a loop for a while:
http://xhip.cjb.net/temp/public/gsoto_punchi_punchi.mp3

[Bonteburg]

Clapping on 2 and 4 gives a more "open", "relaxed" and whatever feeling than clapping on 1 and 3 (which is why I just HATE living in germany, people are almost exclusively clapping on 1 and 3 over here, at best they clap on all quarters).

[Ubiety]

The bottom line is that I said, in so many words, that multiple approaches are needed in order for one to understand why swing sounds good.

oh yes
one could spend minutes..hours..days..even years totally comprehending the many many intricate reasons why swing sounds good

You're right! You're right because, "Why does swing sound so 'good'?", invites speculation. It's no different than, "Does intelligent life exist elsewhere in the universe?"

Things went wrong in this thread because some want to label and nail swing with all its variants to the wall, they want to be able to look it up in a dictionary and be satisfied. Others, like myself, prefer to gain an understanding of swing as it flutters about in its natural environment, occasionally referring to the theoreticians for basic methods of articulation. And then there are those who do not care to know completely what swing might be, they prefer more mystery and they tend to be listeners rather than musicians. They prefer only to know that they like or do not like what they hear; there's no need to ask, "Why?"