This seems to be standard for most grooveboxes and drum machines, yes? But why?
When I think swing I think blues, jazz, Ya know… Music that freaking SWINGS. Glen Miller, Jerry Lee Lewis, Louis Armstrong, you get it. And when I was taught to swing, I was shown this notation:
Which makes perfect sense to me… Pretend like every 8th note is an 8th note triplet, then leave out the second 8th note triplet. If you were to play 8th note triplets over a swung rhythm, it would fill out/divide perfectly.
So why is it that when I turn swing on it wants to swing the 16th notes? Also is there a way to change this? It makes me reluctant to use swing cause I think “gee I want that classic swing feel but this ain’t gonna cut it”
I know you have a monomachine so my answer is regarding that.
On the monomachine manual the swing is described as
“As default, the swing is programmed to shift every second 16th note, starting on step 2. This gives the traditional “shuffle”-style swing for a 4/4 normal speed pattern.”
I’m guessing this is not how you are expecting swing to work. I don’t use swing much so it’s slightly out of my realm.
There are some additional diagrams in the manual, but Monomachine also has swing tracks where I believe you can choose which steps swing and which don’t.
I used to play in a jazz band growing up and as a standard we would play all swing notes. It was never 8th notes and always 16th i think that’s where youve gone wrong and gotren confused.
You’re notation (and what you were taught) looks like a classic shuffle (or rigidly notated Swing).
Swing is a feeling, open to interpretation, and our grooveboxes allow us to interpret that by moving every second 16th back and forward on the grid. Swing is not necessarily notated as rigidly as your example. “Swing feel” may be the only clue in a piece of music and that can be interpreted much more loosely than the alternative instruction “shuffle feel”, as shuffle implies the more rigid notation as a staring point at least.
Many musicians will say that swing cannot be accurately notated, only felt. So your groovebox doesn’t care about notation, just let’s you play with the “feel”. Peace.
Another way to think of it is that your “Swing” notation is only really Swing in the sense that it’s one rigidly notated Swing rhythm inside the set of all possible Swing rhythms.
Oh, and that traditionally Jazz grooved in terms of swung 1/8ths and Rock/Pop in terms of swung 1/16ths.
I only have the Digitakt, not sure how other machines work, but to get the effect you want with the DT, you can set the pattern scale to 1/2x and use the swing at 66% – essentially, 8th swing.
Your confusing the style with the feel - so yeah I’m not wrong but it’s ok if you think I am.
Shuffle is a specialised case of Swing. Yes Swing can be notated as you say. Yes Swing is also a style of music that used shuffle and swing rhythms - but yeah - you need to dig a bit deeper before calling this out bruv.
But even in this example it’s clearly not 16th notes… It’s swung 8th notes that really feel like 8th note triplets.
I get that swing is a feeling and sometimes can be rather ambiguous and not even notated the way I’ve shown it, but it seems to me that it generally falls into the category the way Ive described it, from Robert Johnson to Black Sabbath to whomever. So it still confuses me why the default way to “swing” would be shifting the “e” and the “a” forward and backward.
I always associate “swing” with the 8th note triplet thing, and “shuffle” with the every other 16th note thing, like for example on the TR-909.
But really the terms have been often used interchangeably by various manufacturers so it is easy to see why people get mixed up, just like polyrhythms vs polymeter.
I guess on modern electronic sequencers and drum machines “groove” is a better term especially if it does not just encompass one of the former methods.
You have it right. Swing as it’s generally known in jazz and popular music is 8th note swing. 16th note swing is a very different sound that, for me anyway, associates more with an old school hip hop feel. Maybe it’s because their drum machines all gave them 16th note swing! I’ve always thought it was weird to not have 8th note as the default or at least an option. But I do more straight time stuff anyway. Notation, as you suggest, can give a general idea of swings and shuffles, but even a jazz chart is just going to notate it in straight time and tell you to swing it. Or shuffle it. How it comes out is a matter of interpretation.
Ah yes…Quavers and semiquavers and demisemiquavers and hemidemisemiquavers…How could you possibly get confused?!
@anon64972012 What’s interesting to me is this definitely feels like shuffle/swing in terms of how I’m used to it. Now I’m racking my brain trying to figure out how it was programmed. Like someone said earlier, 1/2x (and double tempo?) might get us there. I’m hearing the snare as falling on beat 3, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it falls on step 9 of the sequence.
Also the sub bass in this song is so insanely prominent. They must’ve just low shelved the bass (what is it a guitar? a synth?) at like 30Hz a crapload. It’s sooooo low.
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