Swing Feel

[herbert]

Hi Ralph,

I have given up on producing more readable scores for real musicians. What I mostly need are orchestral accompaniments for vocalists. I could not afford to employ the Sydney Symphony Orchestra or any other orchestra for our performances. The next best thing is to use Notation Composer and other software in support, to produce backing tracks.

I read with interest your posts on Swing Feel. As I see it, there are many meanings to the word “swing”. At least three meanings relate to music. Swing can mean jazz-related music of the early 1900’s and the dance style that came with it. Swing can mean rhythmic reinterpretation of written music using doted triplets. To me swing means communicating complex rhythm patterns between jazz musicians. With current methods of notation, swing of the type I am interested in is not notated but is created “on the fly” by capable musicians

Ralph, your arrangements are very impressive. Yet to me, they miss the spark of life in its performance. No doubt musicians playing the arrangements would infuse much life into your music. One observation I have made, is that you place most notes exactly on the beat. This is quite un-natural.

I am primarily a notation person. I would be lost without notation and the music theory that goes with it. But to create a good performance, the notation is only a part of the work. Midi editing brings the music to life and is absolutely essential. Good sample libraries are a must.

David commented elsewhere that the Drums staff in “Autumn Nocturne.not” is rather low in volume. What strikes me in that respect is that some instruments are overshadowed by other more dominant instruments. Not hearing certain sounds due to other sounds is part of our hearing physiology. The mp3 process for instance makes use of this by removing masked sounds we do not hear, in order to reduce the size of an audio file.

Notes that cannot be heard need to be made more prominent or removed to maintain the clarity of the sound (avoid muddiness of sound). The Hi-hat in “Autumn Nocturne.not” is for instance suppressed by the snare. One way of dealing with this is to advance the Hi-hat say by 40 ticks and perhaps increase its volume. Just shifting the Hi-hat to the left by say 40 ticks is already an improvement. Try it with the advance in time you feel is right. BTW this adjustment has nothing to do with swing but with getting good sound.

The attack of a note is the important rhythmic part of a note. It must not necessarily fall exactly on the beat in a measure. Having the attack of all notes at exactly the same time, on the beat for instance, is bad practice and not natural. Particularly with percussive and plucked instruments, the sound will be poor and hard to make out. Importantly, there is the danger of clipping and distortion as all volume levels will add together at the same time. The total volume will be the sum of the individual volume levels of each instrument at the time of percussion and pluck of strings. In contrast to this, if we look at ordinary music files, the sum of random sound levels is much lower. It is the geometric sum of each sound level, expressed as: Total volume = square root over (sound level A squared + sound level B squared + sound level C squared …) This ends up much less than a simple sum of coinciding peak sound levels.

I play double bass and played many years ago in various modern jazz groups. There is always competition between the drummer playing his bass drum and the bass player. Harmonic spectra of both instruments overlap. I was mostly able to persuade the drummer to use the bass drum only minimally, at times by bribing the drummer with drinks. At one concert I had to hide the drum pedal from the drummer. The drummer was most upset and kicked the bass drum directly and continuously with his boot. Since then is the bass drum also known as the kick drum.


Best wishes,

Herbert