On 10-Apr-08, at 11:22 AM, Stu McIntire wrote:
I'm working on a piano piece that has a recurring two eighth note motive that has a slight swing to it. Definitely not a quarter/eighth triplet feel; an accurate representation might be an eighth tied to a 32nd note, followed by a 32nd tied to a 16th, but that looks precious to me, esp. in context with the way the rest of the piece looks. Any notation suggestions?
Darcy's suggestion is the best for me, too, but explaining it to someone who doesn't understand swing is the problem. I suggest a note accompanying the work, either as a footnote or an incipit before the body of the work starts (I know that's not a traditional incipit, but I think the concept works!) Then a bracket with "swing" indicating the passage is all that is needed. I like Smart Lines for this, as I can start a bracket with a word or two.
Gunther Schuller suggested that a medium swing in the 50's was played rhythmically somewhat like a sixteenth quintolet; a dotted eighth followed by an eighth, with a 5 over the pair. While this is too fussy for normal notation, it might be useful as an explanation in your accompanying note.
When I first got a sequencer (Cubase on an Atari!) I spent a lot of time trying to figure out what I was hearing when a running eighth- note line "felt" right to me in a jazz context. The "quintolet" was reasonable in a medium tempo, but I noticed that I wanted it "swingier" at slow tempos and more even at faster tempos. I also noticed that it felt "older" in style if I made the eighths more uneven at faster tempos. This all went out the window as soon as I stopped running eighths and tried some combinations of quarters and eighths with various accents. The relationship between accent and rhythm got very complex, too, as I could fool my ear into thinking a note was more "laid-back" than I thought it was if it had a heavier accent. But not final upbeat eighths! This was very confusing to a young jazz musician who thought he had it all figured out...
As one of my teachers used to say, there is no replacement for a good ear.
Christopher _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [email protected] http://lists.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
