The Clarinet BBoard

The Clarinet BBoard The C4 standard

New Topic | Go to Top | Go to Topic | Search | Help/Rules | Smileys/Notes | Log In

Previous Message | Next Message

Re: swung eighths, syncopated

Author: kdk ★2017
Date: 2017-06-25 19:40

Philip Caron wrote:

> Notation varies; some music puts the notation Chris linked
> right in the parts; some music states the word "swing", some
> music writes out the rhythms explicitly, and some just assumes
> the musicians know to swing the eighths. One piece with swung
> eighths also has a couple bars of dotted-eighth & sixteenth
> rhythm, and to be honest when the band plays it it's hard to
> say there's much difference :-)
>

In my experience arrangers who write out the swing (usually with triplet brackets) are aiming at a school market. Marking the "swing" instruction is often done when something makes the style ambiguous, as in a medley where some of the tunes are jazz-based and others latin or rock.

It's sometimes ambiguous when an arranger uses both a "swing" instruction or triplet notation in one place and dotted-eighth-sixteenth notation in another. Ordinarily that's asking that the dotted rhythms be played "square" (as in a Welk arrangement) in contrast to the swing. But then you have composers like Andrew Lloyd Webber writing "Do You Hear the People Sing" in the dotted rhythm with the instruction at the top of the song to play and sing the dotted figures with triplet rhythm (i.e. swing but without the accent shift). I supposed it's easier to engrave dotted-eighth-sixteenths than mark triplets (although simile would work perfectly well), but even easier would have been to write the song in 12/8 instead of 4/4.

Karl

Post Edited (2017-06-25 19:42)

Reply To Message | Avail. Forums | Flat View

Newer Topic | Older Topic

Topics