On Monday, June 2, 2003, at 03:07 PM, Michael Edwards wrote:
[Darcy James Argue:]I suppose this would depend on whether you wanted a parody of how jazz
musicians play eighth notes (which is what you would get with 12/8 or
[worse] dotted eighth-sixteenth notation), or wanted some actual
reasonable facsimile of idiomatic swing. (The former may well be what
you want, given what you write below -- I just thought I ought to point
out that a genuine swing feel is *nothing like* 12/8.)
*Nothing* like? I would have thought "at least a bit like" a genuine swing
feel - or at least "a bit closer than straight notation", which surely is
"nothing like".
I'm afraid not. If you listen to almost any respected and influential post-1935 jazz group, you will find that groups of consecutive eighth notes are played much closer to straight eighth notes than quarter-eighth triplets. Only the anticipations (i.e., offbeat eighth notes tied over, or offbeat eighth notes followed by a rest) are delayed. We've been over this on the list before, many, many times, so I won't go back into it in excruciating detail now.
But don't trust me -- trust Chuck Israels, who in addition to being an active participant on this list, is one of the greatest jazz bassists of all time. Knowing Chuck, he will point you not to his own recordings but to recordings of the great Oscar Pettiford. But the result will be the same -- a 12/8 feel is a horrible bastardization of a genuine swing feel, and straight eighths would in fact be a closer approximation.
If you don't believe me, enter a Basie score in both 12/8 and 4/4 compare the results. And compare both of them to the original recording. Both are very bad (because Finale is incapable of swing), but the 4/4 rendition is actually rhythmically more accurate (although the articulations will be all wrong), especially when it comes to strings of eighths. The 12/8 will be more accurate for anticipations, but *nothing* else.
I suppose there might be different kinds of swing; but I *have*
heard music that sounds close to swing (if not exactly, authentically swing
itself) that is pretty close to 12/8.
I would submit that either what you heard is a very bad approximation of swing, or you were paying attention mostly to the spots where a swing interpretation differs from a "straight" interpretation (i.e., the anticipations), and ignoring the spots where the swing interpretation was closer to a "straight" interpretation (i.e., the strings of consecutive eighth notes).
I don't know that I would describe the effect I would be seeking in my own
music as "parody", although it is not necessarily real, authentic jazz or swing
itself - it probably isn't that, in fact. Parody is not the intent, though, in
the sense of ironic, satirical, or jesting imitation or exaggeration.
That may not be the intent. That may not even be the effect, for your audience. But the perception of even a very sincere piece, very well-intentioned piece, like say Leonard Bernstein's "Prelude, Fugue, and Riffs" -- well, Lenny knew jazz as well as any classical composer, at the time... but for a jazz-literate audience, this piece sounds like, well... parody. Unkind parody, at that.
Stravinsky gets away with more because his parodies (like "Histoire du Soldat" or the Ebony Concerto) are *so* far removed from jazz (rhythmically, especially) as to not be associated with jazz at all, even in the minds of jazz-literate listeners. Gershwin gets a pass because most jazz musicians are familiar with his tunes via re-interpretations by genuine jazz artists. But no one I know actually owns the original version of "Porgy and Bess" -- they own the Miles Davs-Gil Evans version, which is a significant abstraction from the original. They would be (*are*, in fact) horrified by the original scores.
[snip]
My model for the kind of "swing" passages I might write is probably the
piano music of Billy Mayerl, which I have sometimes read described as swing,
although I don't know if the jazz world generally regards it as such, or even
whether Mayerl is considered to be any kind of jazz at all - and I don't really
care whether it's so considered or not. I wouldn't say that I seek merely to
imitate Mayerl's style; but I have occasionally written themes or passages that
are influenced by this type of music.
Well, I have no idea who Billy Mayerl is, for whatever that's worth.
But even if you did notate swing rhythms literally -- which
would involve writing strings of eighth notes as eighth notes; short
anticipations as either an eighth-note triplet or a sixteenth note tied
to either an eighth note or a quarter note (depending on tempo, volume,
etc); all internal accents and phrasing written out instead of expected
-- none of this would actually do much good if the players haven't
internalized the sound of swing from good recorded examples. Absent
that, nothing in the written notation is going to help the players
sound any less lame (although some things will make them sound *more*
lame -- like 12/8 or dotted eight-sixteenth notation).
Well, there *is* jazz music printed that way, with those precise markings
(to a greater or lesser degree). I have several books of pieces arranged for
piano by Dave Brubeck, and they are notated like that; and I definitely find
that more helpful than if it had all been written straight and I was expected to
know when to change the rhythm and when I was expected to play it as written. I
don't know how good my performance of this type of music would be, but I fancy I
have at least *some* feel for it, and can give it something like the right
effect.
The most accurate transcriptions of jazz improvisation (and jazz compositions, especially those by Duke Ellington) I have seen are those done by Bill Dobbins. And even those are written in straight eighths with an implied swing feel provided by the performer.
Here is the salient passage in your post, as far as I'm concerned:
When a rhythm is very subtly different, it may be almost impossible to
notate accurately in a literal sense. I never argued, and I don't believe
anyone argued, that notation can always be totally precise. That will obviously
depend partly on what sort of music you're writing, and on how subtle or complex
its rhythms or other nuances. But I would say that just because it can't always
be totally precise doesn't mean we can't make it as reasonably precise as
possible.
I can't, off the top of my head, think of an alternative way to notate
Viennese waltz rhythm more accurately than based on even beats; maybe one could
be devised, but I suspect it would be far more complicated that a simple triplet
or dotted rhythm.
I agree with all of this so far.
But in swing rhythms, even if a literally-played triplet rhythm doesn't
swing, and even if *true* swing rhythm is very subtle, too much so to be notated
exactly, it does strike me that triplet or dotted-rhythm notation is at least
*closer* to the effect than straight notes. Not necessarily accurate - just at
least a tiny bit closer. Does anyone disagree with that?
I absolutely, thoroughly, vehemently disagree with that. I submit (humbly) that if you were as familiar with swing as you are with the Viennese waltz, you would feel the same way. Notating swing rhythms in 12/8, or as dotted-eighth-sixteenth figures (especially) is about as close to genuine swing as the following notation would be to a genuine Viennese waltz feel:
quarter - eighth rest - eighth note - quarter note.
If you need any further proof, please listen carefully to the recordings of:
Lester Young (and the Count Basie Orchestra from 1937-1939) Ben Webster (and the Duke Ellington Orchestra from 1940-1942) Charlie Parker Dizzy Gillespie Bud Powell Clifford Brown Sonny Rollins Stan Getz Oscar Pettiford Max Roach
... and anyone seriously influenced by the time feel adopted by the above artists.
Regards,
- Darcy
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