If you've downloaded Denny Ilett's fantastic new 'Jazzin' the Blues' package, you'll be hearing a whole new sound for Jam Track Central... SWING. Swing was the pop music of the 1930s and 1940s, and both jazz and blues players absorbed influences from the swing style. The primary blues player associated with swing is of course T-Bone Walker, and you can hear lots of his sound in Denny's solos and jam tracks. But the word 'swing' means more than just a style of old dance music. It's a whole approach to RHYTHM that can be applied to all styles of music. In fact, we're going to show you how it works with reference to two very modern guitar heroes... our buddies Alex Hutchings and Guthrie Govan! Start off by listening to the beginning of 'March of the Machines' from Alex's Custom Fusion 2 package. Pay attention to the heavy riff shown in the Tab below...
Got that? Hear the drums pounding away, in 4/4 time? And the guitar riff is made up mostly of half-beats... 'dubba-dubba dubba-dub ba-dubba-dubba-dub'? Hold that thought and listen to this clip from 'Tipsy Gypsy', taken from Guthrie's new Vintage Modern package. It's a totally different style, but listen to what the guitar is playing in relation to the background drum beat...
OK, so we've got the drums playing in 4/4 again. And once again, the guitar is largely playing two notes per beat, but there's no 'dubba-dubba' this time. It's more like 'shooby-dooby'. It's lop-sided, with the 'shoo' and the 'doo' lasting longer than the '-by'. This, ladies and gentlemen, is SWING! Here's how it works. Without swing, we're dealing with 'straight' time. The most natural way to subdivide a beat is to cut it into two halves (called 8th notes) or four quarters (called 16th notes). The halves and quarters are all exactly the same size...
With swing, the most natural way to subdivide a beat is into three equal parts (called triplets). Although we can still create lots of different rhythms by combining long notes and short notes, the whole sound changes because of the triplet feel. And if we play the first and third note of each triplet, we get that classic 'swing 8th' feel. Instead of splitting the beat in half, we have a longer note and a shorter note. Shooby-dooby!
One last thing. You remember how we started off cutting the beat into 8th notes and 16th notes? Well, you can have swing 16ths too. It's the same principle, except a beat is split into a whole 'shooby-dooby' and not just 'shooby'! Here's a clip of Alex playing in a 16th note swing feel in 'So What Do You Say?', taken from his series Jazzy Jams 1...
If you've downloaded Denny Ilett's fantastic new 'Jazzin' the Blues' package, you'll be hearing a whole new sound for Jam Track Central... SWING. Swing was the pop music of the 1930s and 1940s, and both jazz and blues players absorbed influences from the swing style. The primary blues player associated with swing is of course T-Bone Walker, and you can hear lots of his sound in Denny's solos and jam tracks. But the word 'swing' means more than just a style of old dance music. It's a whole approach to RHYTHM that can be applied to all styles of music. In fact, we're going to show you how it works with reference to two very modern guitar heroes... our buddies Alex Hutchings and Guthrie Govan! Start off by listening to the beginning of 'March of the Machines' from Alex's Custom Fusion 2 package. Pay attention to the heavy riff shown in the Tab below...
Got that? Hear the drums pounding away, in 4/4 time? And the guitar riff is made up mostly of half-beats... 'dubba-dubba dubba-dub ba-dubba-dubba-dub'? Hold that thought and listen to this clip from 'Tipsy Gypsy', taken from Guthrie's new Vintage Modern package. It's a totally different style, but listen to what the guitar is playing in relation to the background drum beat...
OK, so we've got the drums playing in 4/4 again. And once again, the guitar is largely playing two notes per beat, but there's no 'dubba-dubba' this time. It's more like 'shooby-dooby'. It's lop-sided, with the 'shoo' and the 'doo' lasting longer than the '-by'. This, ladies and gentlemen, is SWING! Here's how it works. Without swing, we're dealing with 'straight' time. The most natural way to subdivide a beat is to cut it into two halves (called 8th notes) or four quarters (called 16th notes). The halves and quarters are all exactly the same size...
With swing, the most natural way to subdivide a beat is into three equal parts (called triplets). Although we can still create lots of different rhythms by combining long notes and short notes, the whole sound changes because of the triplet feel. And if we play the first and third note of each triplet, we get that classic 'swing 8th' feel. Instead of splitting the beat in half, we have a longer note and a shorter note. Shooby-dooby!
One last thing. You remember how we started off cutting the beat into 8th notes and 16th notes? Well, you can have swing 16ths too. It's the same principle, except a beat is split into a whole 'shooby-dooby' and not just 'shooby'! Here's a clip of Alex playing in a 16th note swing feel in 'So What Do You Say?', taken from his series Jazzy Jams 1...
If you've downloaded Denny Ilett's fantastic new 'Jazzin' the Blues' package, you'll be hearing a whole new sound for Jam Track Central... SWING. Swing was the pop music of the 1930s and 1940s, and both jazz and blues players absorbed influences from the swing style. The primary blues player associated with swing is of course T-Bone Walker, and you can hear lots of his sound in Denny's solos and jam tracks. But the word 'swing' means more than just a style of old dance music. It's a whole approach to RHYTHM that can be applied to all styles of music. In fact, we're going to show you how it works with reference to two very modern guitar heroes... our buddies Alex Hutchings and Guthrie Govan! Start off by listening to the beginning of 'March of the Machines' from Alex's Custom Fusion 2 package. Pay attention to the heavy riff shown in the Tab below...
Got that? Hear the drums pounding away, in 4/4 time? And the guitar riff is made up mostly of half-beats... 'dubba-dubba dubba-dub ba-dubba-dubba-dub'? Hold that thought and listen to this clip from 'Tipsy Gypsy', taken from Guthrie's new Vintage Modern package. It's a totally different style, but listen to what the guitar is playing in relation to the background drum beat...
OK, so we've got the drums playing in 4/4 again. And once again, the guitar is largely playing two notes per beat, but there's no 'dubba-dubba' this time. It's more like 'shooby-dooby'. It's lop-sided, with the 'shoo' and the 'doo' lasting longer than the '-by'. This, ladies and gentlemen, is SWING! Here's how it works. Without swing, we're dealing with 'straight' time. The most natural way to subdivide a beat is to cut it into two halves (called 8th notes) or four quarters (called 16th notes). The halves and quarters are all exactly the same size...
With swing, the most natural way to subdivide a beat is into three equal parts (called triplets). Although we can still create lots of different rhythms by combining long notes and short notes, the whole sound changes because of the triplet feel. And if we play the first and third note of each triplet, we get that classic 'swing 8th' feel. Instead of splitting the beat in half, we have a longer note and a shorter note. Shooby-dooby!
One last thing. You remember how we started off cutting the beat into 8th notes and 16th notes? Well, you can have swing 16ths too. It's the same principle, except a beat is split into a whole 'shooby-dooby' and not just 'shooby'! Here's a clip of Alex playing in a 16th note swing feel in 'So What Do You Say?', taken from his series Jazzy Jams 1...
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