For nearly a century, jazz musicians and scholars have debated the answer to a musical mystery. As legendary jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong once put it, “What is this thing called swing?”
Swing has long been considered an essential component of almost all types of jazz, from traditional to bepop to post-bop. As Ella Fitzgerald and many others have sung, “It don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing.” You might describe swing as a rhythmic phenomenon in jazz performances — a propulsive, groovy feeling that makes you want to move with the music.
Still, a precise definition of swing has long eluded musicians and scholars alike. As the Big Band era jazz trumpeter Cootie Williams once reportedly joked about swing, “Describe it? I’d rather tackle Einstein’s theory.”
Fittingly, physicists now think they’ve got an answer to the secret of swing — and it all has to do with subtle nuances in the timing of soloists.
Ask a jazz musician what swing is, and you’re likely to get the same answer Christian McBride gave me.
“Swing is a feel,” says McBride, a multi-Grammy-winning jazz bassist, music educator and host of NPR’s Jazz Night in America. “There’s a certain language. There’s a certain inflection of rhythm.”
There’s one defining component of swing that’s easy to hear, and it has to do with how eighth notes are played. Instead of playing them straight, like this …
McBride vocally demonstrates a straight eighth note
… in jazz these notes are swung, meaning the downbeats — or every other eighth note — is played just a little longer, while the offbeat notes in between are shortened, creating a galloping rhythm, like this.
McBride vocally demonstrates a swung eighth note
But jazz musicians know that technique alone can’t explain swing — after all, even a computer can swing a note.
“A computer just ain’t — excuse my language – it just ain’t going to swing that hard, you know?” McBride says. “You still don’t get the real proper swing feel, which is a human feel.”
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Article URL : https://www.npr.org/sections/health-shots/2023/01/18/1139783203/what-makes-songs-swing-physicists-unravel-jazz-mystery