Re: [Harp-L] Re: Swing




Great freaking post!!

Well, thank you, my dude.


I've been wrestling with finding a way to explain swinging, or "off the beat' playing" for ages. I've always, "just felt it" but many folks that I try to teach, don't feel it. Thank you for sharing your thoughts on the matter. They will help me explain in the future.

I once spent an afternoon with Louis Y. Brown, a fabulous character who was Jerry Lewis' musical director from BEFORE Martin and Lewis. Over a billion times more amusing than his boss, this guy was.


He had made his bones in the Swing era, and those kinda guys lived and breathed that feel.

I brilliantly told him my ideas about how swing was about rhythmic displacements, and he looked at me like I was nuts and said "Well of course that's what it is." I'm a bozo, it is my burden, I live with it.

I think though, in the end the explanation comes first and then the demonstration. Here's what it feels like if it doesn't swing - here's what it feels like when it does. (There's a million ways to swing any phrase, so that's lesson three.)

Some people get it right off the bat. Others not, and you have to wonder if they ever will, but I think it's worth trying to teach it even then because I want to think that nobody's hopeless.

I practice swinging, by the way. It is not an afterthought, it's the main course. When I find practice tracks that I like I rarely practice licks. I practice swinging one, two and three note phrases.

That's way more valuable to me than practicing long lines, which I can do in my sleep. After 20 minutes of practicing swinging verrrrry simple phrases my long lines swing better anyway.





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