What Is This Thing Called Swing” Meets “She Blinded Me With Science”

[SSmith1226]

What Is This Thing Called Swing” Meets “She Blinded Me With Science”
Yesterday a scientific paper was released in the “Communication Physics” section of Nature.Com titled, “Downbeat delays are a key component of swing in jazz”.
Most people on this site would agree that in order to “Swing”, a musician extends the duration of their downbeats — every other eighth note — and shorten the beats in between to create a galloping rhythm. But the technique on its own doesn’t explain swing. The scientific analysis presented in this study concludes that listeners judge music as more swinging when the soloists’ downbeats were minutely delayed with respect to the rhythm section, but not their offbeats. This conclusion is instinctively, or subconsciously known by many successful jazz musicians, but is not consciously known by many musicians,
The full link of the article is below. The abstract reads as follows: “To which extent and how do jazz musicians synchronize their timing to create swing?” Swing is a salient feature of jazz music, yet its main psychoacoustical and musical components have remained elusive—save the obvious long-short subdivision of quarter notes. In particular, the possible role of microtiming deviations for swing has been a subject of long-standing controversy. Adopting an operational definition of swing we present a study which ultimately demonstrates a positive effect of certain microtiming deviations on swing. We manipulate the timing of original piano recordings to carry out an experiment with professional and semi-professional jazz musicians measuring the swing of different timing conditions. Thereby we prove that slightly delayed downbeats and synchronized offbeats of a soloist with respect to a rhythm section enhance swing. Analyzing a set of 456 jazz improvisations we find that many jazz musicians do use minute downbeat delays. These results show that systematic microtiming deviations in the form of downbeat delays are a key component of swing in jazz.”

Full Link
https://www.nature.com/articles/s42005-022-00995-z

CONCLUSION: 
It Don’t Mean A Thing If It Ain’t Got That Swing, and stagger your timing.

[GeorgeB]

@ssmith1226 said in What Is This Thing Called Swing” Meets “She Blinded Me With Science”:

And I thought I had swing figured out...

George

[Kehaulani]

Good Lord, Jazz is an aural art, more connected to the physicality and rhythms of a basketball court than to a scientific micro-analysis.

You listen, get the rhythm in your bones, and, in the words of Clark Terry, "Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate".

[SSmith1226]

@kehaulani said in What Is This Thing Called Swing” Meets “She Blinded Me With Science”:

Good Lord, Jazz is an aural art, more connected to the physicality and rhythms of a basketball court than to a scientific micro-analysis.

You listen, get the rhythm in your bones, and, in the words of Clark Terry, "Imitate, Assimilate, Innovate".

The study was done with the “aural” analysis of professional Jazz Musicians listening and rating samples. “After listening to original and digitally tweaked piano recordings, jazz musicians were more than seven times as likely to rate music as “swinging” when the soloist’s timing was partially delayed with respect to the rhythm section, researchers report….” It analyzes and quantitates the “rhythm in your bones” for those of us who don’t have that gift, or for those who have it but can’t accurately define it and want to better understand it.

[Trumpetb]

I applaud the thread and the attempts to understand jazz/swing but I question the wisdom of it.

I do not think that we can come to understand jazz by separating it into parts and analysing those parts any more than we can hope to understand a cat by separating it into its parts.

We will have its parts, a head, a body a tail, four legs and perhaps can understand those. But it will yield nothing of value of the entire cat. We wont see a cat anymore all we will see is a dead cat. Life will be missing.

As in walking we all know how to walk but if we try to examine walking as we do it, and then try to improve our walking by thinking of all the activities we do as we do them, shifting the weight swinging the leg placing the heel rolling the foot shifting the weight lifting the other foot, we end up stumbling and can no longer walk well. Life will be missing.

Paralysis through analysis means just that and I have heard enough jazz that has benefitted from analysis to know where problems appear when we base jazz upon analysis.

A series of well studied runs, a bunch of licks and short phrases borrowed from well known musical cliches sounds artificial and unmusical. Once more, life will be missing.

I would trust the words of kehaulani on jazz even if my life depended upon it, "jazz" as he so eloquently said "is an aural art" and I believe it can only be truly understood if studied as a whole all together and not analysed and studied in parts.

Scientists are very fond of analysis but not all things can be analysed with any hope of attaining understanding. We can analyse sunflowers by Van Gogh, we can come to understand the colours, the forms, the brush strokes, but the beauty of the work and how it is created eludes us.

We cannot understand beauty or life in art by studying the mechanical methods of its construction.

And so it is with Jazz.

Jazz can be copied emulated and duplicated, but none of these copies is at all convincing, there is life and soul present in jazz that is missing in these copies, and it is I think this life and soul that Miles tried so hard to capture in recordings through his career.

Louis Armstrong did not try to break jazz down into parts he understood I think that trying to analyse and describe jazz in parts is a tempting trap that can lead nowhere, and he refused to fall into that trap, his words ring loud in my ears. "Jazz, you will know it when you hear it".

[SSmith1226]

The following is a link to a December 2, 2022 “Science Friday” discussion of this subject. It is worth taking 10 minutes to listen to it.

https://www.sciencefriday.com/segments/science-jazz-music-swing/

[Kehaulani]

I hear a lot of Dixieland/Trad. Jazz players who rush the beat.

[Trumpetb]

That describes me kehaulani

But then its all Rubato and if the player feels it is appropriate and in keeping with the sense of the work then it can work well and be satisfying as Jazz to an adult audience.

Nursery Rhymes where the beat is rushed can be loved as any jazz work is loved and while not to the standard of Miles or Chet can get people dancing and the fact it is at heart a childish childlike melody makes them love it all the more when played in fast paced Dixieland style.

[Kehaulani]

Do I count Six, "Five Pemmies"?

[J. Jericho]

[Trumpetb]

@Kehaulani

you do indeed count six,

He often had up to eight in the five pennies, it being more a play on his name Nichols, there being five pennies in a nickel.

The members of the Five Pennies were often major players who went on to be major band leaders themselves

Players such as Benny Goodman, Jack Teagarden, Glen Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, Pee Wee Russell, Miff Mole, Joe Venuti, and Eddie Lang.

The original Five Pennies were said to be Jimmy Dorsey, Glenn Miller, Artie Schutt, and Dave Tough along with Red himself.

My first exposure to Red was watching the movie "The Five Pennies" which was a great movie but sadly with little reality or truth in it.

I am pretty sure that his Five Pennies had several incarnations and formed and reformed over the years as he searched for lasting success which eluded him until he gave up music and then much later resumed his career and reformed the Pennies.

As I understand it he died unexpectedly in 1965 of a heart attack in a hotel room while on the road, and his band played the gig the next day with his cornet sitting on a chair unplayed.

[GeorgeB]

@trumpetb
Thanks for that info. I often what happened to Red Nichols. Rather sad, too.
George