How To Really Start Swinging 

Finally a good tutorial on swinging! Every other video I’ve tried to looked up just keeps saying to go to these weird parties….

lol that trombone player in the orange sweater really wants to be somewhere else 🤣🤣

Classical musician: "what do you mean swing, the sheet music clearly shows 16th notes"!

My professor taught us how to swing using the Spanish word for grape "uva"... It's pronounced oo-vah. Hold the "oo" long enough for the amount of swing you want. In my high school half of us were Latinos so it stuck instantly. We use to do drills singing it at ppp and then crescendo fff... Fun times!! Great video!

Subtlety. I've been thinking about that word a lot recently, how the depth of music is in the nuances. Like both beginner and pro musicians might play the same notes, but all the feel just lies within these little details. It's not what you play, it's how you play it. How deep are you willing to go? Jacob Collier talked about it as his ear developing an increasing resolution as he grew as a musician. Thank you Mrs Nolte for helping us developing ours!

It seems like Aimee is the only music utuber that is willing to talk about swing. Always helpful.

OMG! Your T-shirt printing is a famous housing estate (named Choi Hung, mean Rainbow , estate )where I am living in Hong Kong. Nice video btw😄

Your voice and your teaching style put me at ease.

Great topic! I think the key to knowing how "early" or how "late" to play your off beat times is understanding and feeling the compound time that underlies pretty much all dance or swing music. For example the Brazilian "clave" and other meters are built on the interaction of 2/4 and 3:2, at the same time. If you can feel BOTH times, simultaneously, and relax into the rhythm, and your timing will be there, (as long as you stay relaxed.). The off-beats are IN the triplet feel of the 2/4 8th notes,, and the 3:2. I think most good players with a feel for jazz and other dance-based genres get this instinctively, but may not know how to express it in words. They may not realize cognitively that they're punching off-beats according to the polyrthythm embedded in the tune. But they're doing it. Problems arise when they don't realize, consciously or unconsciously, that there's a 3:2 underlying that 2/4 (and you can dial the emphasis on either one up or down as you feel it), or when they lose the relaxation, and tense up and try to force the timing instead of relaxing into it. I think the "clock" metaphor is useful at the very beginning, to show students they can chose between an earlier or later timing of an off beat coming into the downbeat. But it's only the beginning. The key is that there isn't just one clock, but TWO clocks, ticking away simultaneously.

Hello Aimee, Your music and teaching is amazing. My name is Robert, and I am a 70 year old piano player who finally retired. With the remaining years left, I need to do some serious piano work. I am a dedicated r+r rhythm piano player who will stay that that way. Your teachings are dragging me into the jazz world. Your instructions embellish my music. Thank you.

I've been doing it for a week and now I need some tutorial on how to stop... 😲!!

This video has reenforced to me just how good my middle-school band teacher really was. :-)

Ray Smith?! THAT Ray Smith??!? No way! Ray directed my high school all-state jazz band waaay back in the 80s and I use his lessons on how to swing to this day. You are a great educator yourself, and it's wonderful you are passing it all along with your own flair. I really enjoy your channel and you inspire me to maybe start my own :) Also, the Agony of the Bass Trombone is palpable... Peace! Kenny

Great approach! Thanks, Aimme!

Simplicity of sharing your knowledge it comes from love God bless you Your are so sweet Excellent stuff thanks

Dear Aimee Thank you for sharing all your knowledge . I think I am the one of many which keeps watching you and learning so much . Love from London ( which is not foggy today ) .

Love this rhythmic walk through of how to balance the nuance and subtlety of accents to achieve the real sense of swing! Wish I’d had this years ago in band; but it’s always helpful !

Great video.

Thank you so much for this lesson, it helped me a lot, specially when to hit the chord in the off beat. Tks a lot.

A great description. Thankyou

Thanks ! Good demo, exercise and explanation.

Yes! The most fundamental groove concept every swingin’ jazz musician needs to have internalized. Great and VERY IMPORTANT video.

Thanks, Aimee

It's fun to replay the intro over and over and try to do a different scat line to it.

thanks for choosing an exercise that even a complete amateur can do! love that swing!

Fabulous truth about swing .. hits the spot ..!! Thanks a lot !!

I wouldn't ask you to do that, ever... We're here to freakin' swing.

Thanks Aimee, great video!! Swinging is what really differentiates a pro from a beginner, and this is one of the best exercises I've found for this fundamental topic. I don't understand why many online videos and tutorials don't even dedicate time to one of the most important characteristics of jazz.

I just want to thank you for this video. Out of 10, i would give 9,99. Why not 10? The angle of the camera. Really like the way you explain.

wonderfull! as a brazilian guitarrist i follow you channel cause it allways shows, crystal clear, what the swing language means!

Thanks for your time and teaching. I grabbed a song from life and didn't want to lose it, so we, my teacher and I wrote it down it took many hours and days because I played by ear ,so the more we wrote it the more I replayed it the more I was frustrated because I did not like it or felt it enymore..It became to classical , now I know why .

Absolutely love your videos Aimee! I play finger style jazz guitar learn so much about the inner pulse from your lessons on rhythm. Keep frickin' swingin' forever!

Thank you Aimee - a very good lecture.

this drummer approves of your message :-)

Very good lesson!

Thanx, Maestra Aimee🌹🌹🌹

I usually start swinging after 6 beers! 😀. Great video!

Love how you break things down!

What a great teacher. I've always loved Aimee's swing, but I ain't got it, yet. Will try this.

I think how you feel the time depends a lot on you role in the ensemble. A drummer and a saxophone player can both swing, but they're gonna swing different ways. Most players aren't gonna think about this way, and I wouldn't necessarily recommend thinking about it this way, cause you have to listen to the language to know the sound. Having said that, I think of the drummers ride cymbal as a steep swing like you're describing. However, a soloist can lay the quarter notes back a bit as long as they're lining up on the offbeats. I think that's about the swingingest groove you can get. If everybody's playing quarter notes exactly together, I feel like it loses a lot of gravity. Offbeats should be lined up. That's how I think about it.

Great! Thanks for sharing these truly useful tips.

Amazing video! Thank you so much!!!

This is great, it is so very inspiring. I thought before swing had something to do with triplets only. But, now it makes more sense to me. Thanks Aimee.

Great video Aimee! Learnt a lot :)

So, that's how you swing it! Great lesson! I can't wait to practice! Thanks for sharing, Aimee!

reminds me of articulations i use in baroque music: i usually play the first 8th note legato and 2nd staccato for lots of energy followed by little

It’s funny to hear you say that you might sound crazy when you’re explaining how to do the moves by sounding it out (chonk chonk) I literally was doing that last night at a group practice and was laughing because half the people in the group probably thought I was a nut for explaining how to play a rhythm by sounding it out but hey if you can say it you can play it. that’s what I was taught. Good video

Thanks, Ms. N. I think the original of "Killer Joe" by the Jazztet makes a good illustration of the timing part of this. If you listen to pianist McCoy Tyner's groove during the head, he's playing a *very* laidback swing - he holds the skip note of the vamp way back; pretty much a sixteenth-note swing. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-7a8Us_e9lvQ.html

Swing it Baby!

so helpful, what a concept!

Love the way you break down these things into easy to follow tips and ideas. Awesome content!🎶💯

Thank you for this. I do need to improve swinging a lot

I’ve been doing your exercise with a free metronome app on my phone, setting it to eighth-note triplets in 4/4 time at about 60 beats/min. I count “ONE-and-ah-TWO-and-ah-THREE-and-ah,” etc., playing the swung eighth-notes on the “ah” click. As I increase the tempo, the “swing” feel improves.

A a drummer I've spent a lot of time working on the different swing feels from almost sixteenth notes to triplets. If you listen to great drummers there a real range of feels with this. Some play closer to triplets (Elvin Jones) others close to sixteenths (Art Blakey). I wouldn't say that tighter swing (16ths) is "more" swinging, but it definitely has a drive to it that really makes music feel good. But someone like Elvin playing with Coltrane is less interested in drive and more interested in circularity and fluidity. Maybe that's less swinging I'm not sure. It's a different approach to jazz anyway. An exercise I'll offer for improving your swing: practice with a metronome but keep the metronome on that skip note. So you have to learn to play your rhythms against thst note. Your job is to keep it feeling good and consistent

I want to comp with my left hand and solo on the right. So I switched hands. Right hand doing the simple on beat count. Boy, that was much harder than the original exercise but I think I got it!

Thank you so much for this video! Your suggestions are going to help my guitar rhythm playing out so much!

The real mastery of rhythm is intrinsic and natural. It happens from the inside out, not from the outside in. Either you were born with it or you weren't. You don't rationalize it, you don't number it, you can't even explain it. You can try thousands of times and eventually play a rhythm within perfect math, but it will be just that: time math. That said, for those not born with a natural sense of rhythm, this is a helpful video. Good luck.

My God! I have never analyzed it like this... I just play by ear and nuance the rhytm and note/chord volume in a way that feels good and exciting, typically a little different every day. Like a folk musician, I guess.

I've seen this explained as "Swing Percentage", and it's surprising how much of a difference there is between the lowest amount of swing 60% (7:00 on the clock) and the highest 70% (8:30 on the clock).

Thanks

Basie is the way.

Besides having some swing dance lessons under your belt and then dancing with yo partner within 15 feet of a LIVE swing dance band who rehearse for swing dancers mainly...I recommend starting into the swing feel by experimenting with your "and"... ID the "one" (down versus upbeat) of a mid-tempo swing tune and start playing with your "and"'s. Its not 'freaking swinging' but for folks who have obstacles with rhythm itself (groove)..there's a good place. Good video. :-)

When my younger students say they are in jazz band at school, I ask them which jazz recordings do they like to listen to. Most of them have never listened to jazz.

Sounds like Mack the Knife..Great instructions Aimee

Cool name for a tune. Eleven 55!

You are cool ✌

Thank you, Aimee. Love the concept, and the exercise. With respect, one suggestion: when you want us to play/tap along with you, a count-in would be great. Also, always fascinated me how Freddy Green could swing so hard, while playing (mostly) just quarter notes. It’s the “nk” in the “chunk”.

Great as usual! Would love to see a video on "The Lydian Chromatic Concept of Tonal Organization"!

Can you do some new bill evans content? Really love your approach to his playing ☺️ have a great day!

I love this!!! Thank you so much for your insight as always, much appreciated!

grazie davvero bello (thanks really beautifull) ciao!

Aimee the human metronome-rock-solid time (lovely)

Eu te amo, Aimee.

I'd say listen to the blues too. The blues shuffle train leaves exactly at 11:55

Does swing get written as it's true rhythm metrically, a verbal direction such as "swing" , or a legend key reference such as quarter note = dotted quarter note? As a classically trained musician, I can't help but write the literal rhythm out, but it makes it looks so much more complicated, and somehow I don't think jazz performers would understand why I'm being so literal with my rhythms, but how else can I let the performer know exactly what I want rhythmically? Am I over thinking all of this? Do syncopated rhythms need to be literal or are they assumed by jazz performers without needing to perfectly represent everything metrically?

Nice lesson, I'm a drummer but interested in piano and this particular time feel... Swing also seems to have a lot to do with relaxation, letting it come from the hips more than the arms...

Awesoem stuff

I didn't understand the initial explanation... and I'm a very experienced musician, just not a jazzer (yet!). Are you just saying to 'dot' the eighth notes (or double dot) rather than triplet them? The two takes from the band sounded the same to me. This is what I feared before getting into jazz, that it can be obfuscatory and mystical about the 'feel'.

You're a god send!

Most swinging music is from Cuba and Brazil. The way Brazilian percussionists play the tambourine is mental.

So instead of placing it with a triplet feel as in 2/3 of the way between the beats, are you thinking more of a 16th note thing, 3/4 of the way between the between, 1 e and A, on the A? Hope that makes sense!

why not call that second eighth note a sixteenth note, or 1/32 note, or whatever it actually is? How would you make a midi score swing?

When you delay accenting the off beat, are you not really shifting the accent to a finer subdivision of the beat? So instead of accenting the eighth note between beats, you are accenting something like the last of three eighth note triplets, or the last of four sixteenth notes.

Freakin’ swing!

It's interesting that you don't show the music as I find it hard to figure out the swing from the music as opposed to just listening. This goes for anything that has off-beat rythm. I can read the rythm from the music, of course, but I can't really play if well just by reading the music. I have to get it in my ears and "just play" instead.

It’s interesting to think about vocalizing things like horn parts or lyrics in Scatting style. If you begin a word with a B sound it pretty much has to start precisely where you would see it in notation, but if you start it with the S sound it’s likely the S part will be before it would appear to happen on the page. I am coming to think that this is where a lot of the “swing” comes from. Sometimes if you’re trying to notate vocal music from a recording it can be a stilting thing to have to notate it because of these subtleties.

More like 11:55:59secs 🙂 I always equate this feel to ghost notes for a drummer...

Would it be so much to ask for you to give us a selection of bars with different accents for us to practice?

whahahaha the guy in the orange sweater , hes sleeping haha

That guy on the right side at 1:48 seems to be completely overwhelmed ;-)

Can you teach Omkring Tiggarn Från Luossa Hootenanny Singers (Bjorn's Band before ABBA)?

I remember a jazz musician telling me that swing guitar emphasizes the offbeat, and I asked him "so sort of like reggae?", and he either didn't hear me or chose to ignore it.

This is a very hard topic. Early you mention "groove", but this can be complicated if as some claim there is a difference between feeling "groove" and feeling "swing". (I am not taking a position: just noting the ambiguity and equivocal use of terms.) You also use the phrase: "where you place your accent" and this really highlights the difficulty: The use of the "where you place" implies a timing question. But the use of the word "accent" is about stress not time. There are many very hard questions, not the least of which might be if you swing in your living room but no one hears it have you swung? Is swing something you do or is it something that the audience hears/feels?

Not sure about the very late placement of the off beats. Sounds rushed to me, not swingy at all. It's tempo depending in the first place, off beats get closer to straight 8s the faster the tempo. To use your analogy: start at around 11:40 to swing relaxed, get closer to 11:30 when speeding up. Above 11:40 is where classical trained musicians usually land when they're told to swing.

!!??? My HS Orchestra Instructor would always yell at us to; "PLAY THE RESTS !!!" "PLAY THE RESTS !!!" 😠

Fantastic! As a guitar teacher, comping like this is really hard to explain to my student, but this was great. This sounds strange , but take a tennis ball and hold it about 5 inches above table/desk etc. drop it on beats 1 & 3, but let it bounce twice as an eighth note would until you get a swing going.

Your professor looks like Schoenberg .

Do you listen to your own recordings? Does your recorded sound swing as hard as the greats? If it doesn't, then keep at it.

How on earth do you get your two hands to play different things????? I CANNOT do that.! I once played clarinet, fairly well.....but piano....forget it!

Trombone player (1:35 - 2:15) is not having a good day.