I have been lurking, watching the swing notation controversy, and feeling reluctant to contribute to maintaining a difficult to resolve thread. But Darcy, in slightly hyperbolic though kind (and appreciated) words, has brought me in.
First, I reiterate my profound agreement with Darcy's perceptions about how jazz musicians express rhythm. To play strings of 8th notes in "triplet" feel results in the breaking of lines into two note groups that sound lumpy and hopelessly corny (Humpty Dumpty, I call it). The institutionalization of this practice is partly a result of the institutionalization of a "folk" art into the academy. Jazz education has a lot to answer for.
Anticipations - eighth notes on weak beats which are tied over into the following strong beats, or which are followed by silence, are felt and expressed by sensitive jazz musicians as "belonging" to the following beat (they are always treated harmonically so as to agree with the chord which is to come, not the one during which the note actually occurs). Thus, they are truly "anticipations" and are played late (in slightly varying amounts, according to style and local idiom), so that they are closer to the pulse with which they are harmonically associated. (We can only count time forward, "one and, two and", but I tell my students that it's good to think of these things as "and one, and two.") Those notes always "swing" and any jazz musician will play them that way, sometimes in agreement with the drummer's subdivisions of the beat, and sometimes independently creating interesting cross rhythms. For any even reasonably literate jazz musician, special notation for this is redundant and slightly insulting.
For most string sections however, there can be problems, as they tend towards a universal interpretation of all eighth notes, and the players can have a more difficult time differentiating between continuous lines and anticipations. In these circumstances, notating the anticipations with triplet subdivisions has proven useful to me.
That said, I remember a thread some time ago in which someone spoke of "period" music. From my point of view, all music is "period" music, and we are in (or nearing the end of) a "jazz period", in which conventions are understood and agreed upon across a broad segment of the jazz music reading population (though not among the jazz dabblers like Bernstein and Stravinsky, great musical minds that they were). When this period has run its course, no amount of precision notation will render a score decipherable to future reader/interpreters in such a way that a perfect late 20th Century idiomatic performance will be likely to result.
(I for one, don't think I care. If someone finds my music interesting in 2103, perhaps it will sound better to those ears if the interpretation is closer to the conventions of the time than if it adheres slavishly to my conventions. I'd hope that the "architecture" would carry the message.)
To those for whom the score is the piece (and I respect them and their point of view, though I think they are doomed to the inevitable frustration of their intentions), there is an understandable striving for great precision and accuracy. For those of us who are writing to organize the coordination of music among associates with whom we are in aural communication, as close as is practical and efficient is the best decision. That's always a judgment call, and more is not always better.
Peace,
Chuck -- Chuck Israels 230 North Garden Terrace Bellingham WA 98225-5836 (360) 671-3402 fax (360) 676-6055 http://www.chuckisraels.com/ [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ Finale mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://mail.shsu.edu/mailman/listinfo/finale
