[Dixielandjazz] Swinging?

[Larry Walton Entertainment - St. Louis]

Well the transition happened much in the same way that language differs in 
various parts of the country with different pronunciations.  If you play 
older trad and ragtime correctly the dotted eighth is exactly three times 
longer than the sixteenth which gives it that ricky ticky, Lawrence Welk 
sound.  At that time writers were trying to make sense out of swing and 
write it but they did the dotted eighth / sixteenth and if you look at older 
music that's the way they printed it.  They finally got it solved, more or 
less by agreeing to print everything as even eighth notes and gave up on 
trying to make it look like something and depending on the musician to 
figure it out with unwritten rules.

When I first started playing with big bands in the 50's I was almost at a 
loss as to how they wrote jazz and how I should play it  because I had been 
trained classically.  I was lucky to be playing with some good Jazzers who 
only made fun of me some of the time and I was a quick study.  So swinging 
was a transitional process.  Yes guys "Swung" notes long before it was swing 
as I did before I figured out how it was printed.
Larry Walton
St. Louis
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Russ Guarino" <russg at redshift.com>
To: <jim at kashprod.com>
Cc: <dixielandjazz at ml.islandnet.com>
Sent: Friday, September 22, 2006 11:10 AM
Subject: Re: [Dixielandjazz] Swinging?


> Technically, a "Swing" pulse is splitting a beat into three parts and 
> tying the
> first two parts together, followed by the third part.  They were playing 
> swing
> style for quite a few years before anyone figured out what was being done.
>
> When I was in high school playing in our dance band, we played swing all 
> the
> time but did not know what it really was.  The big band charts sound 
> really
> great using swing rhythm.
>
> I have an A. Shaw instruction book that discusses swing, but he did not
> understand the "3 split beat" concept and explained it as a tied  three 
> 16th/
> one 16th figure, played in a relaxed fashion.
>
> To me, Trad "swings" but not in the  technical sense.  It is exciting and 
> fun.
> IMO if you put swing into trad, it sounds out of place.
>
> Russ Guarino
>