Jeff Chang, Jazz Curriculum Officer jjazz@wmea.org
Playing with a Natural Swing Feel “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing,” Playing with a Natural Swing Feel
P laying with a natural swing feel is one of the most essential task for a young jazz ensemble. With a nice swing feel, you don’t have to play anything technical and you can still sound great. However, how do we teach a young band to swing? Full disclosure, this article will focus on creating swing feel with horns (sax, trombone and trumpet), we will talk about rhythm section in a different episode. Swing 8 th notes =Triplets??? One of the biggest misconceptions is that “swing 8 th notes=triplets”. This concept works okay in a slower swing tempo (bpm=80-110), however, for anything medium swing and faster, it could be misleading. When young play - ers who are not exposed to enough jazz music (let’s face it, most of our students are in that category), by telling them swing 8 th notes = triplets can create a few common prob - lems: 1. Notes are played too short and lost the smooth flow of a good swing feel. 2. They try too hard to play the triplets and creates tempo issues. How Do the Masters Swing? First, let’s figure out how do the masters do it using “Flight of the Foo Birds” as an example . In the studio ver - sion of Flight of the Foo Birds by Count Basie. The tempo is about BPM = 185, if you slow it down to 0.5 speed on YouTube, you can hear that the 8 th notes are played in an even feel with slight accents on the upbeats . It’s even more apparent in the live version in which they played the tune at a faster tempo (BPM= 280). In short, a natural swing feel is more even than the triplet feel, what creates the “bounce” is the slight accent on the upbeats (or beats 2 and 4). How to Teach It? (You can see demonstrations of the following 5 steps by clicking on the link https://youtu.be/lAYzliZfX80) Step 1: Play Bb Major Scale at a medium tempo, rhythm section accompanies with a swing feel. All notes are long and even, NO ARTICULATION at this point. Tip #1: Ask horn players to listen to the high hat, which is on 2 and 4. You could ask students to tap their feet on 2 and 4 while playing the scale. Tip #2: Trombone players will have to articulate, but ask them to do it as light as possible. Step 2: Play exactly the same thing, but this time adding light accent to notes on beat 2 and beat 4. Tip: Some kids would articulate too hard and too short on the accents (2 and 4), remind them to keep things long and light, push stronger air instead of tonging harder. ALL NOTES ARE LONG, THERE ARE NO SHORT NOTES.
Step 3: “Ghost.” Playbeat 1 and beat 3 softer to create contrasting accents on beat 2 and beat 4, instead of playing beat 2 and 4 heavy, it helps to “ghost” beat 1 and 3. Tip: Keep reminding kids to play long and even quarter notes, adding “ghosting” may trigger them to play beats 2 and 4 short and heavy. Repeat steps 1-3 until you feel students are getting a solid grip, depending on the level of your students, this process can take up to a week to feel natural (assuming you spend 5-10 minutes daily on it). This is also a fun way to practice major scales in different keys in the style of swing. Step 4: 8 th Notes!! It’s very similar to step 1-3, just a little faster. Continue to remind students that all notes are played even and con - nected. Some students old habit of playing “triplet swing 8 th notes” will come back especially when playing 8 th notes, be patient and persistent in reminding them to play even. Application: I use the above exercises as a daily warmup for my stu - dents, it’s a combination of learning scales and learning swing feel. However, it’s common for students not to make the connection of applying it when making music, such as playing charts or improvising. Like everything else, this too will take repeated and consistent effort. 1. Improvising: I often would use a blues progres - sion to have students apply the swing 8 th notes feel. I would have the rhythm section play a blues (Bb, F, Eb, whatever key you are working on). Horn players are limited to play 8 th notes ONLY. They can just run scale in the particular key, the most important thing is to focus on playing with a long and connected feel. 2. Any charts with lots of consecutive 8 th notes would be a great opportunity to reenforce this concept. Be patient and be consistent, it may take a long time for kids to “master” this concept. listen. We could design the most comprehensive exercises, but it won’t make sense if students don’t know what it is supposed to sound like. Here are some examples of how masters playing their 8 th notes in a swing feel. Feel free to share with me some examples that you like, I would love to expand my library too!! Listening Examples: The most important thing about learning jazz is to
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