 The Clarinet BBoard
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Author: beejay
Date: 2007-09-23 08:14
Can any of you jazz players tell me what is meant by the expression straight eighths, or even better point me in the direction of a recorded example.
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2007-09-23 08:28
Attachment: eights.png (16k)
Straight eighths is "rock beat" instead of "blues/swing" or "ternary" (which are roughly equivalent to a triplet with the first two eighths tied together). Straight eighths all have exactly the same played length.
(edited for clarity)
--
Ben
Post Edited (2007-09-23 08:56)
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2007-09-23 08:30
Straight 8ths means all the 8th notes are the same length, opposed to swing 8ths where the first on of each pair is longer than the second (exactly how much depends mostly on who is playing).
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Author: BobD
Date: 2007-09-23 11:40
....and not to be confused with "straight eights" as in Packard automobile.....although there is a tenuous association since all 8 cylinders were the same length.
Bob Draznik
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Author: beejay
Date: 2007-09-25 07:16
Thanks everyone. As I understand it, you play everything in jazz rubato (swing) unless it is specifically marked straight. I wonder if there is a parallel with baroque music and unequal notes.
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Author: Steve Epstein
Date: 2007-09-25 08:02
beejay wrote:
> Thanks everyone. As I understand it, you play everything in
> jazz rubato (swing) unless it is specifically marked straight.
No. You listen to lots and lots of jazz until it is in your veins and then you keep on listening. And then when you play, it will be with authenticity. Sometimes there will be more swing and sometimes less, but even when it is "straight", if you play it authentically, jazz itself will always swing.
Steve Epstein
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Author: clarnibass
Date: 2007-09-25 08:28
Yes I agree with Steve. Whether something has "swing" 8ths or straight 8ths doesn't make it have swing or not. Playing with swing does. To explain swing mathematically, it is basically EXACTLY when you play the notes. Listen to a lot of jazz from all the different times and styles, there is no really other way to understand it.
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Author: beejay
Date: 2007-09-25 10:19
I do take the point that you learn to play jazz by listening to it. However, my question was related to some stuff I have been reading about the history of notation over the past four hundred years. Baroque music was written straight, but was certainly not played straight. Since we don't know what the conventions were, we can never be sure we are playing it with historical accuracy. Imagine a situation a few hundred years from now when beings on a distant planet are studying the history of music on earth but (for sake of argument) have no means of hearing it. Wouldn't their problems with jazz notation be the same as ours with early music?
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Author: BobD
Date: 2007-09-25 13:46
"a few hundred years from now"....Wow
Bob Draznik
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Author: redwine
Date: 2007-09-25 15:39
Hello,
With no disrespect intended toward tictactux, his definition is the text book definition of swing vs. straight eighths. However, when musicians play that way, they sound like "professor long-hair", which reminds me of one of my jazz teachers who said often "it's alright if you have your doctorate degree, as long as you don't play like you have your doctorate degree". It also brings to mind the famous quote from Louis Armstrong when asked to define swing (jazz), who said "if you've got to ask, you're never going to know".
The concept is rather indefinable. Because I play both classical and jazz, I feel a "swing" in classical as well as jazz music, but they are both played completely differently. If I had to define swing, I would say that the swing occurs more from accents than lengths of notes. There's a fuzziness about that too, though, in that the way you attack, combined with the accents, combined with subtle changes in lengths of notes really creates a swing.
Jazz initially was an aural tradition, so listening a lot will definitely be your best teacher, combined with playing it.
Knowing almost nothing about baroque performance practices, did Bach swing? I would think yes. Did Mozart swing? Yes. Did Artie Shaw swing? Yes. Did Louis Armstrong swing? Yes. Would I like to hear a concert of that quartet? Yes.
Ben Redwine, DMA
owner, RJ Music Group
Assistant Professor, The Catholic University of America
Selmer Paris artist
www.rjmusicgroup.com
www.redwinejazz.com
www.reedwizard.com
Post Edited (2007-09-26 01:43)
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Author: kilo
Date: 2007-09-25 16:57
I always enjoyed the precision of Latin big bands (Machito, etc.) — all straight eighths and they still "swing" like crazy.
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Author: jmcgann
Date: 2007-09-25 20:57
Even eighths can swing much more than the usual 66%/33% (and who knows where the 1% goes) equation so often taught in books.
As Ben says, you have to use your ears.
Miles Davis said of Oscar Peterson: "He sounds like he had to learn to play the blues".
www.johnmcgann.com
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Author: Steve Epstein
Date: 2007-09-25 21:02
I don't get to play very much jazz (with other people, I mean), but I've listened to it most of my life. I know that I can "swing" because I've been accused of doing it -- inappropriately -- on other kinds of music. In those other kinds of music, as well as jazz, I get to read lots of eighths and dotted eighths. Those other kinds of music include strathspeys and rants for Scottish and English country dancing, respectively, as well as hornpipes played as hornpipes, and Scandinavian couple dances such as hambo and polska. (For you uninitiated, yes I spelled those correctly, and a hornpipe is not an instrument but a dance in dotted eighth rhythm).
It drives me crazy when the authors of tune books attempt to notate exactly how the eighths should go, regardless of the musical form. For example, re-writing the dotted rhythm as an eighth - sixteenth rest - sixteenth triplet for jazz, or adding a grace note to a Scottish dotted eighth, a grace note played from a distance such as a seventh, intended as a bagpipe or open-holed flute half-hole ornament. I notice that when people try to read these things, they usually sound worse. You need to listen first, then try to copy, using the "fly specks" as a guide, and take into consideration what is possible on your instrument (if it's not intended as clarinet music). I daresay this may apply to a limited extent even when playing classical music. I mean, you can read a score, paying attention to all the black marks, but it helps also to listen to a recording of a virtuoso performance, doesn't it?
[edited for punctuation]
Steve Epstein
Post Edited (2007-09-25 21:04)
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Author: tictactux ★2017
Date: 2007-09-25 21:19
Steve Epstein wrote:
> It drives me crazy when the authors of tune books attempt to
> notate exactly how the eighths should go, regardless of the
> musical form. For example, re-writing the dotted rhythm as an
> eighth - sixteenth rest - sixteenth triplet for jazz, or adding
> a grace note to a Scottish dotted eighth, a grace note played
> from a distance such as a seventh, intended as a bagpipe or
> open-holed flute half-hole ornament. I notice that when people
> try to read these things, they usually sound worse. You need to
> listen first, then try to copy, using the "fly specks" as a
> guide, and take into consideration what is possible on your
> instrument (if it's not intended as clarinet music).
Yup. "My" notation example is only useful to explain the rough rhythm, but on a score sheet that just looks awful - I hate thusly cluttered sheets. You hear it once, then you know how it should be played. A "moderate swing" or the equivalent on the top of the page or at a section start should suffice. (I am sometimes surprised they write plain quarters instead of "eighth note eighth rest" in certain swing pieces)
--
Ben
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