Swung notes / playing with 'swing feel'

[lars]

@tommo casually dropped this bomb in another thread:

@Troy taught me that usually the swing feel is achieved by having paths of different lengths above and below the string. So one side of the pickstroke takes longer than the other, even though the hand moves regularly.

I didn’t want to derail that other thread completely and I feel that this warrants a thread on it’s own because I’m sure I’m not the only one that’s been trying to sound like Mike Stern and not being sure exactly what dials to turn.

If we limit the discussion to wrist based motions, how do you play with more or less swing feel?

In the same vein: The accented up-strokes that players like Mike Stern produce, are they created through the mechanical setup as well? I.e are they intentionally creating a small mismatch between the escape motion and the amount of pick-slanting/edge-picking, so the string catches just a little bit, to make the up-strokes louder than the down-strokes?

[Troy]

With wrist technique you just make a big enough motion so that the string is no longer in the center. We put up a clip on Instagram of our latest David Grier meeting which is a great example of this, but for some reason it isn’t playing properly. Here’s an unlisted reupload to YT:

David Grier Mechanical Modes

You can see the hand is moving back and forth normally, but the string is off center. This creates the swing. When we review “Technique Critique” videos of players who are just starting out and learning to do a tremolo, “swing tremolo” is a common error that we hear. It means the motion is not centered on the string. When you view Magnet footage you can see this, the motion is not centered on the string so you get unintentional swing.

For Stern, you’d have to look at the video and see what he’s doing. If there’s an accent or swing, you should be able to see whatever is causing it.

[lars]

@Troy

“swing tremolo” is a common error that we hear. It means the motion is not centered on the string.

@Troy

With wrist technique you just make a big enough motion so that the string is no longer in the center.

You sure made that sound easy!

At least I know that I was previously barking up the wrong tree, by trying to make a motion that had greater acceleration on the up-stroke.

Initially I thought I could just shift my anchor point a tiny amount and the tremolo would be asymmetrical and swing, but since the wrist lets us track across several strings without moving the anchor point, a slightly displaced anchor probably isn’t the answer…

Last time I worked on my swing feel my teacher told me that I sounded like a robot because I was swinging with a 66/33 ratio. Instead he told me to aim for a down-stroke duration of 57-59%. He’s able to tune the amount of swing like a dial, but my ears aren’t that sensitive and so a large part of the problem is that I can’t hear when I’m in the pocket. I ended up putting this topic away because I didn’t know what to do mechanically nor what it would sound like when I did it right

[joebegly]

Wow, this is awesome. I’ve only ever dabbled in jazz. I know any time I was doing a swing feel though, I always had some intentional little ‘pauses’ or ‘hanging’ in my movements. I never thought about just making the stroke longer in one direction…or, as better described here, making the string no longer the center of my playing.

@lars

Last time I worked on my swing feel my teacher told me that I sounded like a robot because I was swinging with a 66/33 ratio. Instead he told me to aim for a down-stroke duration of 57-59%. He’s able to tune the amount of swing like a dial, but my ears aren’t that sensitive and so a large part of the problem is that I can’t hear when I’m in the pocket.

To a layman that sounds bonkers lol! Either way that’s cool there are people with that type of control. Again, I’ve only dabbled in jazz on and off over the years. My focus was always on the harmonic aspect and not the ‘feel’. It’s like the more I learn, the less I realize I already knew haha!