how does the techniques talked about here apply to jazz playing that uses a lot of swung 1/8 notes? i’m just starting to explore and develop faster UWPS wrist deviation type picking and it’s encouraging after many years of being stuck. so i’m no expert, but it seems like that type of fast ‘vibrating’ picking wouldn’t really work when you have to play swung 1/8s. anybody got any wise words on that topic?
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Past a certain speed “swing” comes from the articulation rather than the timing.
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Thanks for that… to clarify, you’re meaning it’s so fast you can’t really tell if they’re swung or not? Can you tell me more about how they’re articulated specifically? What kind of articulation implies swung 1\8s? Like emphasizing the ‘ands’?
I mean people will tell you that swing means of each pair of 8th notes, one is shorter and one is longer.
But at really fast tempos you wouldn’t be able to tell if one was shorter and one was longer because there isn’t time to hear the difference.
So you make up for it by accenting some notes and de-emphasising others.
There was a really really good, concise explanation of this with examples that I found several years ago when I was trying to learn the Saxophone, but I can’t remember where it was nor can I find it.
In the absence of me finding it, check out some fast Coltrane solos and some fast Cannonball Adderley solos and note how they characteristically place their accents in different places.
(Like Coltrane has that stepwise deedle de der DER der der der DER der der der… etc whereas Cannonball has a more liquidy DOOdle oodle Er der doodle)
Thanks for listening, I’m here all week.
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Ok I’ve found it, it’s the 7th page of this pdf:
in the interests of amusing everyone I won’t remove my butchered attempt to onomatopoeia my own way through the same information
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The reality is that there are very, very few jazz guitarists who pick every note. Some fusion guys do (like McLaughlin and Di Meola). Pat Martino is one of the few straight-ahead guys I can think of, and he has a very specific, recognizable sound.
But virtually everyone else – Charlie Christian, Wes, Benson, Jim Hall, Metheny, Scofield, Stern, Rosenwinkel, etc, etc – makes liberal uses of slurs. Jazz horn and keyboard players don’t articulate every note, so if you want to replicate that phrasing, you pretty much have to follow suit. It also makes lots of lines easier to play if you don’t have to worry about picking every note.
As Prigmnr said earlier, at faster tempos, everyone’s swung eighth notes tend to get more even. But even at slower tempos, there’s a lot of variance in swing articulation. A lot of players’ eighth notes are “straighter” than others:
Here’s a terrific interview with Charles McPherson where he mentions this (the whole thing is worth reading):
CM: Yeah, but Red —and Wynton Kelly too…and Bill Evans too— they have a real dotted-quarter and sixteenth kind of swing. Not when it gets real fast of course, but at medium tempos there’s that kind of hiccup in the line. Barry, Sonny Clark, Bud, Bird, Sonny Rollins, Trane: they play more like even eighth notes, and that’s how I want to play too.
[Picks up his horn and demonstrates an exaggerated swing like Red and a smother eighth like Barry.]
EI: I guess if you are playing a more straight eighth note it can grind in a nice way against the implied triplet.
CM: Especially for horn players, if you accent the upbeat note too much in the line, it can shorten the second eight note into a sixteenth.
EI: Joshua Redman told me something like that, that at lessons with beginning saxophonists he usually had to tell them to stop trying to swing the second eighth too much, that it was too herky-jerky.
CM: Exactly. I want to play more evenly, although still with the accents and placement of course.
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Wow…awesome. thanks for responding…
Yeah the intended take away from the stuff I posted earlier was that if swing at fast tempos comes from the articulation, not the timing, maybe it can be more like that at lower tempos too and less like the “daht-d daht-d dah” of someone with no jazz feel trying to swing.
Ultimately swing comes from being responsive to the musicians you’re playing with, fitting in the cracks, keeping a sense of forward momentum and a load of other stuff that can be a bit vague to try and implement.
There’s no replacement for listening to as much jazz as you possibly can, and trying to work out everything you hear that you like the sound of on your instrument.