Swing, a term used to express the feel of musical rhythm, is recognized as an important component of jazz music, although the musical time behind the phenomenon has not been determined.

A study published in Communications Physics found that delaying alternate notes within a bar by 30 milliseconds can improve swing in jazz music.

Jazz artists evaluated music with these beats delayed as seven times more likely to have swing than music without delays.

Swing, a term used to express the feel of musical rhythm, is recognized as an important component of jazz music, although the musical time behind the phenomenon has not been determined.

Microtimings are believed to play a significant role in the creation of the swing effect in jazz.

Theo Geisel and colleagues used a soloist portion from three songs (The Smudge, Texas Blues, and Jordu) to modify the music in order to produce intentional delays to the “downbeats.”

Downbeats are like the strokes of a baton that a conductor might make (as opposed to the offbeats in between two strokes of the baton).

In one case, the authors pushed back the downbeats of the soloist by 30 milliseconds. In another condition, the authors put off both the downbeats and the offbeats.

The authors asked 19 semi-professional jazz musicians and 18 professional jazz musicians to rate how swingy the manipulated music sounded to them.

Jazz artists were 7.48 times more likely to describe a piece of music as swinging when the downbeats were delayed but the offbeats remained the same.

This enhanced probability of a higher rating for the music’s swing was substantial.

When compared to the piece without any delays, there was no noticeable change in the music that had delays on both the downbeats and the offbeats.

The authors demonstrate that deliberate delays in the downbeats of soloist jazz music dramatically raise their swing rating, providing more evidence that such delays are an essential component of jazz’s swing.

The authors make a point of noting that their earlier research revealed that random changes to the notes did not improve the swing grade.

Although the authors speculate that this may be due to the higher standards and expectations of professional musicians, professional jazz musicians significantly lower overall swing ratings than semiprofessional musicians.

Additionally, the authors examined more than 450 solo jazz musician performances and discovered that these downbeat delays were in nearly every performance.

This shows that jazz artists employ these small timing changes to enhance the swing feel of their performances.

The authors come to the conclusion that pinpointing the downbeat delay’s systematic influence on swing contributes to a more accurate definition of swing in jazz music.

They believe that this insight could help improve computer-generated music, which is currently limited in its ability to create the swing impact found in jazz music.

Source: 10.1038/s42005-022-00995-z

Image Credit: Getty

You were reading: Here’s How-to Make Jazz Music Feel More Like ‘Swing’