This practice was changed to crotchet-quaver a little later.

Incidentally, in music written up to and including Schubert, triplet quavers in, say, the left hand with melody in the right will have a dotted quaver and semiquaver in the right, played as crotchet-quaver, as in Schubert's Ave Maria for instance,although this is in ytiplet semiquavers. If a bar is to be played 'straight' and not swung, you must play equal quavers. This is, two quavers equals Crotchet-quaver. Most publishers will have a small-print notice at the beginning of a piece which is to be 'swung'. Forgive the clumsy terminology - but therein lies our question! What sort of performance direction should a composer give in this sort of case in order that the musician understand his intentions? All I've ever seen is things like 'With a heavy swing'.Is this all there is? (I'm not a jazz expert!) My interpretation of it was to instinctively play it with an almost totally dotted rhythm, whereas he then showed me that his intention was for it not to be played so close to 'dotted', but only swung a little bit.

This is a question from a pupil who was playing his own composition, which he intended to be played with a jazzy rhythm. I seem to remember briantrumpet has written a thesis on the relative lengths of quavers in swing.Īs for performance directions, I'm not sure you'd ever see it written down precisely, swing is something the band needs to feel together, 'light swing' might be one way of describing it. You also find that as the tempo increases the lengths of the quavers even out so you wouldn't try to play be-bop with 2 to 1 lengths. the off beat quavers are accented, there's also a stress on 2 and 4. Apparently, the more modern 'hip' way to play swing is for the quavers to be pretty much even lengths with all the swing provided by the articulation i.e. You've got to remember that the relative lengths of the quavers is only a small part of a swing style - a walking bass line can really swing when it's only crotchets, equally you can play the triplet style lengths of the quavers and not swing at all.

I think that means something different to a slight swing - I'd interpret it as meaning 'laid back' i.e played slightly behind the beat.

Quaver definition music