Why does swing sound so "good" ?

[basic channel]

..at least to me

Maybe some brains are just attuned to it.

I love many types of music but in the jazz/techno/house/hiphop genres, swinging & triplets just sounds SO funky and nice...just make you want to "swing" your pants .

It's great fun to program a really straight rhythm and then hear it come alive by swinging the notes in the sequencer, either manually or with a swing slider (ie FLS etc.).

In fact I sometimes find it quite difficult to enjoy just straight beats/rhythms ... may I've got a problem with swing addiction

That's one of the reasons I HATE tarnce - it is mind-crushingly tedious, hideous and cheezy.

BC

[Meffy]

[W.A.G.] Could be that playing two triplets and resting the third gives a cycle of anticipation/resolution that continues throughout the song, at a faster pace than phrase-, bar-, and section-level rhythmic, melodic, and harmonic structures. [/W.A.G.]

[nuffink]

Dizzy Gillespie used to talk about "Clock Time" and "Human Time". Swing is human time.
And you're right, without it dance music don't mean a thing.

p.s. FLS uses 16th shuffle which isn't as funky as true 8th swing. The answer is to halve the BPM and treat FL's 16th notes as 8ths. Then it grooves.

[Signal chain]

would you mind sharing with us "swinging manually"

what would you move?

(snare- hi hats- bass- kick- melody)... (one- some- all of them)

and how far, (distance before or after the precise bit)

just to better understand what swing means in terms of cents ...

cubase sx here, that would be great ... thanks

marco.

[speccyteccy]

That's one of the reasons I HATE tarnce - it is mind-crushingly tedious, hideous and cheezy.

I always assumed that was the whole point of trance - to have simple, quantized and predictable beats to send you into an, erm, trance.

Problem then occurs when people think that just 'cos the beat is easy to make, then the rest is too - hence all the shite.

[JumpingJackFlash]

would you mind sharing with us "swinging manually"

what would you move?

(snare- hi hats- bass- kick- melody)... (one- some- all of them)

and how far, (distance before or after the precise bit)

just to better understand what swing means in terms of cents ...

cubase sx here, that would be great ... thanks

marco.

Look up Swing in Wiki.

'Swing' is a rhythmic thing (nothing to do with pitch), where instead of 2 notes being performed equally, the first is made longer than the second.

So something like this:


Becomes more like this:


(So the second note is delayed slightly)
Swing may either be notated with different note values, indicated by other instructions in the score, or even implied without any written indication.

The exact amount of swing can vary, from something like a ratio of 1.5:1 to 3:1. It is important to note that swing is generally meant to be felt. - It is not supposed to be mathematical, and it is often open to interpretation.

There have been threads on the subject here before if you want to search.

[nuffink]

would you mind sharing with us "swinging manually"

what would you move?

(snare- hi hats- bass- kick- melody)... (one- some- all of them)

and how far, (distance before or after the precise bit)

just to better understand what swing means in terms of cents ...

cubase sx here, that would be great ... thanks

marco.

Swing the eighth notes. In a typical house style "boom chick bap chick boom chick bap chick" you want the offbeat hats (the chicks) to be slightly late. How late is up to you, it's song dependant. This is swing.
That's why FL's 16th note shuffle doesnt work too well unless you use the trick above. It doesnt delay the offbeat 8th notes.
The same applies for most other dance styles. Except trance, obviously.

[basic channel]

That's one of the reasons I HATE tarnce - it is mind-crushingly tedious, hideous and cheezy.

I always assumed that was the whole point of trance - to have simple, quantized and predictable beats to send you into an, erm, trance.

Problem then occurs when people think that just 'cos the beat is easy to make, then the rest is too - hence all the shite.

"Trance" is just an arbitary label for this particularly souless, awful subgenre of "dance" music. It's like Jean-Michel Jarre update for the 90s / 00s

Personally I get "tranced out" on swinging grooves - even apparently straight "4 to the floor" house music can swing bigtime...... Mood II Swing, Herbert (f**k me, can that man swing), MAW etc.

[speccyteccy]

That's one of the reasons I HATE tarnce - it is mind-crushingly tedious, hideous and cheezy.

I always assumed that was the whole point of trance - to have simple, quantized and predictable beats to send you into an, erm, trance.

Problem then occurs when people think that just 'cos the beat is easy to make, then the rest is too - hence all the shite.

"Trance" is just an arbitary label for this particularly souless, awful subgenre of "dance" music. It's like Jean-Michel Jarre update for the 90s / 00s

Personally I get "tranced out" on swinging grooves - even apparently straight "4 to the floor" house music can swing bigtime...... Mood II Swing, Herbert (f**k me, can that man swing), MAW etc.

Arbitary? So it's not called trance because it's hypnotic?

[zerocrossing]

It's simple: tension/release. Oldest trick in the book. It's not about the early or late beat, it's about the hit that's right on that makes it all OK.

[The Chase]

p.s. FLS uses 16th shuffle which isn't as funky as true 8th swing. The answer is to halve the BPM and treat FL's 16th notes as 8ths. Then it grooves.

This always annoyed me. I wish you could control each indivisually like when drumming.

[WoJ]

it dont mean a thing if you aint got that swing...

[basic channel]

p.s. FLS uses 16th shuffle which isn't as funky as true 8th swing. The answer is to halve the BPM and treat FL's 16th notes as 8ths. Then it grooves.

This always annoyed me. I wish you could control each indivisually like when drumming.

I asked quite a few times for swing to be per pattern - how cool would that be.

Never got implemented

You could have loads of different patterns in a project swinging (or not) to different degrees

In fact, I'm going to march over to Looptalk and bally well ask for it again....

[nuffink]

p.s. FLS uses 16th shuffle which isn't as funky as true 8th swing. The answer is to halve the BPM and treat FL's 16th notes as 8ths. Then it grooves.

This always annoyed me. I wish you could control each indivisually like when drumming.

I've got a version of this ...

...that does that. It's not as useful as you'd think.

There are much better ways of manipulating the groove.

[Uchdryd]

..at least to me

Maybe some brains are just attuned to it.

I love many types of music but in the jazz/techno/house/hiphop genres, swinging & triplets just sounds SO funky and nice...just make you want to "swing" your pants .

It's great fun to program a really straight rhythm and then hear it come alive by swinging the notes in the sequencer, either manually or with a swing slider (ie FLS etc.).

In fact I sometimes find it quite difficult to enjoy just straight beats/rhythms ... may I've got a problem with swing addiction

That's one of the reasons I HATE tarnce - it is mind-crushingly tedious, hideous and cheezy.

BC

As one who enjoys both swing and trance music, I would suggest that both genres involve catchy rhythms that are worthy of praise. Swing music uses accented triplets and shuffle notes to grab your interest, while good trance music uses other "off beat" devices to get you interested. With the exception of REO Speedwagon fans, people don't like boring rhythms. Sure, there's plenty of hideous trance music out there, and surely there's some hideous swing out there as well, but both can make you feel like dancing if made well.


Uchdryd