Transcribing Swing Rhythm For A Track

[jpbaker67]

Hi, all. I have searched the forum for this topic and found a few possible helpful hints, but many of them are several years old, so I thought with the updates there might be some news.

I just transcribed a song for someone. The song is in swing rhythm, and I notated it by making all the eighth notes ("quavers") in standard style, noting "Swing" as a tempo directive.

Now the person has asked for a performance of this chart. Because it's a very complex song, I would like to simply use the chart I made, convert it to MIDI, and use some software I have to convert the MIDI directly in to a performance that I can record and send her. So here is my question: Is there a way to convert a chart so that the eighth notes are played in swing rhythm, without having to re-chart it as triplets with the middle note missing? In other words, is there a shortcut for this?

Thanks for any help you can give. I hope this makes sense! Joel

[Sherry C]

Hi Joel,


It does make sense, and is a feature that we've briefly discussed trying to incorporate at some point, but have not because it's a bit tricksy. I also don't know of any other software that converts the performance of straight 8ths to swing (though most, including our Musician and Composer do the other way around).


The bad news is there's no "hey presto" button to change it all to swing. The good news is that Composer does have a Piano Roll editor that allows you to change the performance without changing the as-written notation. If you're not familiar with it, please see the User Guide and use the Index to look up "piano roll" for step-by-step instructions for editing the Piano Roll. Our own Ralph Rayner (rrayner) is a whiz at this and may be able to give you some tips for doing it quickly.



For future use, the easier way to do it is probably to enter the notes as the more complicated notation but correct performance, and then immediately use Format/ Retranscribe and select "Swing" as the notation style.



I hope something here helps!


ttfn,
Sherry

[rrayner]

Hi Joel,

I am happy to see your interest in swing music. I am no expert on the matter, but please see my discourse on 'Swing Feel". The original thread was posted in August, 2013. I think that you will find some valuable insight there. The response/expansion given by Herbert is particularly detailed, and way beyond my original intention - but very well done.

Ralph Rayner