Swing (jazz performance style)

In jazz and related musical styles, the term swing is used to describe the sense of propulsive rhythmic "feel" or "groove" created by the musical interaction between the performers, especially when the music creates a "visceral response" such as feet-tapping or head-nodding.

While some jazz musicians have called the concept of "swing" a subjective and elusive notion, they acknowledge that the concept is well-understood by experienced jazz musicians at a practical, intuitive level. Jazz players refer to "swing" as the sense that a jam session or live performance is really "cooking" or "in the pocket."

The term "swing" is also used to refer to several other jazz concepts, including the swung note (a "lilting" rhythm of unequal notes) and the genre of swing, a jazz style which originated in the 1930s.

Description

Like the term "groove", which is used to describe a cohesive rhythmic "feel" in a funk or rock context, the concept of "swing" can be hard to define. Indeed, some dictionaries use the terms as synonyms: "Groovy... [d] enotes music that really swings." [ [http://nfo.net/usa/slang.html Slang Expressions in Popular Music ] ] The Jazz in America glossary defines it as "...when an individual player or ensemble performs in such a rhythmically coordinated way as to command a visceral response from the listener (to cause feet to tap and heads to nod); an irresistible gravitational buoyancy that defies mere verbal definition. [ [http://www.jazzinamerica.org/l_glossary.asp?StartLtr=S&EndLtr=T Jazz Resource Library - Glossary ] ]

As a performance technique, swing has been called "the most debated word in jazz". When jazz performer Cootie Williams was asked to define it, he joked that "Define it? I'd rather tackle Einstein's theory!"
Benny Goodman, the 1930s-era bandleader nicknamed the "King of Swing" called "swing" "free speech in music", whose most important element is "...the liberty a soloist has to stand and play a chorus in the way he feels it..." His contemporary Tommy Dorsey gave a more ambiguous definition when he proposed that "Swing is sweet and hot at the same time and broad enough in its creative conception to meet, every challenge tomorrow may present." Boogie-woogie pianist Maurice Rocco argues that the definition of swing "...is just a matter of personal opinion." [ [http://www.savoyballroom.com/nets/context1/whatis1.htm What Is Swing? ] ]

Jeff Pressing's 2002 article claims that a "feel" is "a cognitive temporal phenomen emerging from one or more carefully aligned concurrent rhythmic patterns, characterized by...perception of recurring pulses, and subdivision of structure in such pulses,...perception of a cycle of time, of length 2 or more pulses, enabling identification of cycle locations, and...effectiveness of engaging synchronizing body responses (e.g. dance, foot-tapping)” [WHAT IS SWING? From Bill Treadwell's "Big Book of Swing" published in 1946. http://72.14.205.104/search?q=cache:tmrZVsOeXnMJ:www.uni-hamburg.de/Wiss/FB/09/Musik/Dozenten/Pfleiderer/Escom5.pdf+groove+music+definition&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=264&gl=ca&lr=lang_en|lang_fr]

References

Further reading

* Clark, Mike and Paul Jackson. "Rhythm Combination" (1992).

* Middleton, Richard (1999). "Form." "Key Terms in Popular Music and Culture". Malden, Massachusetts. ISBN 0-631-21263-9.

* Pressing, Jeff (2002): "Black Atlantic Rhythm. Its Computational and Transcultural Foundations." "Music Perception", 19, 285-310.

* Prögler, J.A. (1995): "Searching for Swing. Participatory Discrepancies in the Jazz Rhythm Section." " Ethnomusicology" 39, 21- 54.

See also

* Rhythm
* Swing music
* Swung note
* Groove