Can someone explain to me why swing affects 16th notes?

I must be very confused

Confirmed.

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.

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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.

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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.

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This masterpiece is driven by the classic swing/shuffle from the TR 909

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Ah fuck of course! Sorry in england when youre taught notation we dont use 8th/16th notes we have completely different terms

Regardless off the 8th/16th notes thing its exactly the same concept anyway

Ah yes…Quavers and semiquavers and demisemiquavers and hemidemisemiquavers…How could you possibly get confused?! :stuck_out_tongue:

@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.

Cut this from the Roger Lynn article that @anon64972012 linked as it describes how swing is implemented in a lot of devices:

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Look what OT can do :smile: :

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I forgot, Rytm can change swing trig placement as well…

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Swing can also be used as a delay, or microtiming…

That’s deceiving, I thought you knew all Elektron manuals by heart. :stuck_out_tongue:

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they were very much a soundsystem first, so I guess sub would have been a BIG thing in their sound from that… It’s a London thing*.

  • alright, a Kingston thing people brought to London. :wink:

What do you mean they were a sound system first? Do we have non humans living among us, making music?

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ha, I knew this would get confusing :wink:

I meant they operated as a soundsystem in this sense:

so they had their own custom built equipment and would play warehouse parties and illicit dances and whatever around London before they were a pop act. And that kind of dance is all about who’s system makes it difficult to breathe properly/gives you an itchy nose because the sub is so powerful.

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I wish everyone would take a minute to read that Roger Linn interview so we could all be on the same page with this stuff.

Indeed. I learned a lot from this article. It is an answer to the thread question, and there’s a ton of other useful and interesting stuff in there.

Strangely, he seems to prefer the Tempest (over, say, the Rytm)… not sure why…

Don’t know if you’re kidding, but he was one of the creators of the tempest :slight_smile:

Just now getting around to reading that article. I love this quote

I noticed that what I had recorded played back on perfect 16th notes, effectively correcting my timing errors, so I decided to call this bug a feature, which I called ‘timing correct’, which the copycats later called ‘quantize’.

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From a drummers perspective ( me ):
Either cut your scale or your tempo in 1/2 to get the sound that your brain is equating with the notation you were taught.
The difference in notation is academic in the sense that 1/4 notes at 120bpm are going to sound like 1/2 notes @ 240bpm.

In my mind, the term “swing” is used in sequencers because it shortens the distance between straight 8ths in the closest way that a machine can emulate what people do, keeping in mind that this terminology is ~ 40yrs old at the time of this writing.

Swing is a style, something you can ride at the park, a setting in sequencers, something a pendulum does… just make it sound the way it needs to so the hips swing, eh?

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