Small can of worms--What is swing?

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BryanC
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Small can of worms--What is swing?

#1 Post by BryanC » Thu Aug 19, 2004 6:54 am

Now before you all jump on me for being a troll, I'm more interested in where the word 'swing' came from and how the 'sycopated', hang back style of music we associate with jazz from the swing era became known as being 'swung'. The reason I ask is because people who have little or no music background don't relate well to the word when I describe the importance of the 'swing' feel, or the swung beat in swing music (and its importance as a defining characteristic).

Also, I'm wondering if anyone has examples of a song, played by two different artists where one is swung and the other is not so that I can play a few examples side by side for people to hear the difference between a straight rhythm and a swung one.

This is not, I repeat, not a debate about what makes music swing--though I suspect it'll still creep into this thread.

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Lawrence
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#2 Post by Lawrence » Thu Aug 19, 2004 1:17 pm

My dimestore theory has always been the "swinging" hand back and forth while conducting the rhythm for a band (mid-tempo and lower) corresponds to the rhythm more than most other rhythms that existed back then. The syncopation of the rhythm creates a hesitation at the top end of each sweep of the hand that accentuates the "swing" from side to side. That hesitation creates a motion that looks like someone is swinging on a swing (with a similar hesitation at either end and a quick "swinging" sweep in between).

It took me a while to "get" the descriptive reference. It's also difficult to describe without demonstrating. It does make descriptive sense, but its difficult to describe in words, alone.

As for examples, Carmen McRae does two different versions of "Exactly Like You:" one of which we all know too well as the song the Moocher's made popular, and another live, "Westie" version that is on a few albums, including these two:

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Re: Small can of worms--What is swing?

#3 Post by djstarr » Fri Aug 20, 2004 1:39 pm

BryanC wrote:Now before you all jump on me for being a troll, I'm more interested in where the word 'swing' came from and how the 'sycopated', hang back style of music we associate with jazz from the swing era became known as being 'swung'. The reason I ask is because people who have little or no music background don't relate well to the word when I describe the importance of the 'swing' feel, or the swung beat in swing music (and its importance as a defining characteristic).
That's a great question! I was chatting with Ham Carson's band last night (asking them about Lester Leaps in which they had just played) and Buddy Catlett (an old timer who played with Basie and Louis Armstrong) said that a lot of the terms musicians used came from the dancing they saw. So I'll ask them this weekend about swing/swung and see what they have to say.

As far as tunes, this is perhaps not the greatest example, but Chick Webb does a version of Stars and Stripes Forever on "Standing Tall". You can still tell it's a march (which is why I don't spin it - lol) but it swings compared to a straight ahead version.

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#4 Post by Matthew » Sun Aug 22, 2004 11:34 pm

If you have Finale, you can adjust the swing (at least on playback). I'd imagine you could export two different versions of the same piece, though I haven't used the software enough to be sure. It'd be an unorthodox way, but it might make the basic "swing" concept clear.

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Re: Small can of worms--What is swing?

#5 Post by moody628 » Mon Aug 23, 2004 3:38 pm

BryanC wrote:Now before you all jump on me for being a troll, I'm more interested in where the word 'swing' came from and how the 'sycopated', hang back style of music we associate with jazz from the swing era became known as being 'swung'.
I have been told in the past that the term swing originated with the dance created in Black Harlem around 1910... what now most closely remains as East Coast Swing. It was a reference to the swinging of the hips during the dance. Originally, the dance was limited to certain blues styles until whites "slumming" in Harlem began adopting the dance in the early '20's, applying it to 'big band' sounds. The evolved form of the dance existed by 1922, but was became known by the popular name of Lindy after Linbergh's flight in 1927.

Jazz developed somewhat later, so that aspect is a a further evolution.

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#6 Post by Drew » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:04 am

Swing music, or 'Swing' as a noun I think of as the prevailing style of jazz music played from the late 1920s to the early to mid 1940s. It is usually but not always played by a big band ensemble. It is jazz music that is made for dancing.

'Swing' as a verb is the ratio of accented to unaccented notes in a 4/4 rhythm as roughly 2:1, some exceptions given to tempo. It even appears in music that is neither jazz nor by design dance music.

As to origins of the verb, I have never heard about any or even really pondered it but I think with the accented/non-accented ratios it has that sonic dip or suspension, which I think is where the name 'swing' came from. The noun was a genre that incorporated the verb.

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Re: Small can of worms--What is swing?

#7 Post by Kyle » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:25 am

moody628 wrote: The evolved form of the dance existed by 1922, but was became known by the popular name of Lindy after Linbergh's flight in 1927.
That was never confirmed, by the way. There was no newspaper article found in NewYork newpaper archives

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#8 Post by Kyle » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:26 am

oh, and

are you saying that LH came from ECS?

WOW

I thought ECS was a neo term. My G-Ma called it the New Yorker back in the day. not ECS

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#9 Post by jmatthew » Wed Aug 25, 2004 11:53 am

I'm hardly an expert (for that you might want to chat with D-nice over at the dance-forums) but, it was my understanding that ECS as we now know it is a dumbed down version of lindy hop devised by dance studios to make money off people wanted to learn swing without actually having to struggle to teach something as difficult as Lindy.

That being said, it's also my understanding that all of the forms used in east coast pre-date the lindy circle that's kind of the defining element of Lindy.

but I could be definately wrong. :)

And I figured the term swing came from the whipping momentum that characterizes the dance, but I've never seen any kind of litererary support for that.
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BryanC
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#10 Post by BryanC » Wed Aug 25, 2004 5:25 pm

Where lindy hop came from, its name, etc, I'm sure is another larger can of worms that this thread isn't really prepared for...

Hey Brenda, did you get any answer over the weekend?

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#11 Post by Lawrence » Mon Aug 30, 2004 7:42 pm

jmatthew wrote:I'm hardly an expert (for that you might want to chat with D-nice over at the dance-forums) but, it was my understanding that ECS as we now know it is a dumbed down version of lindy hop devised by dance studios to make money off people wanted to learn swing without actually having to struggle to teach something as difficult as Lindy.

That being said, it's also my understanding that all of the forms used in east coast pre-date the lindy circle that's kind of the defining element of Lindy.

but I could be definately wrong. :)

And I figured the term swing came from the whipping momentum that characterizes the dance, but I've never seen any kind of litererary support for that.
Frankie and others like him have said that East Coast Swing was distilled from Lindy Hop in the 40s by the Arthur Miller-type ballroom dance companies for people who did not have the same innate musical ability but instead needed simpler patterns, not the other way around.

That story coheres with the "musicality" of either dance. Lindy derived obviously from 4/4 music (8-count basic patterns), whereas a 6-count pattern could not have easily derived from the music, itself. Instead, 6-count more probably derived from an existing dance.
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Re: Small can of worms--What is swing?

#12 Post by CafeSavoy » Tue Aug 31, 2004 6:27 am

Kyle wrote:
moody628 wrote: The evolved form of the dance existed by 1922, but was became known by the popular name of Lindy after Linbergh's flight in 1927.
That was never confirmed, by the way. There was no newspaper article found in NewYork newpaper archives
The incident could be mythical even though it is mentioned in several dance histories. But even if it was true it would not be surprising if it was not mentioned in new york papers of the time since activities in the black side of town were rarely mentioned. Normally there's a gap between when dances were first danced uptown and when they became known downtown.

I agree though that the term East Coast Swing is a later creation. Most sources seem to mention the New Yorker as the 6-count dance. But I'm not sure if 6-count moves were developed later or if they were just extracted later. Foxtrot and swing both have 6- and 8-count moves and foxtrot goes back at least to the 1920s. I'm not sure though if foxtrot had 6-count moves in the 1920s or if they were developed later. I suspect that counting moves in 6s probably was a studio invention since supposedly Frankie didn't count when he first started teaching again.

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Re: Small can of worms--What is swing?

#13 Post by mousethief » Tue Aug 31, 2004 8:01 am

Kyle wrote:
moody628 wrote: The evolved form of the dance existed by 1922, but was became known by the popular name of Lindy after Linbergh's flight in 1927.
That was never confirmed, by the way. There was no newspaper article found in NewYork newpaper archives
Kyle, are you referring to the infamous "Lindy Hops the Atlantic" headline?

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#14 Post by Kyle » Tue Aug 31, 2004 12:57 pm

yes Kalman, i am


I read on some forum that people did some hardcore research trying to find that paper and came up empty.

The one thread of hope that keeps the theory alive is since it was a black dancer that "named" the dance, then it is possible that the paper that he was reading was a black periodical, that wasn't archived. The paper could have been around for a few years, and then stopped printing. When it went out of circulation, no one archived the paper or kept anything marking the existence of the newspaper.

So unless someone can find a copy of that paper, it will always be myth. And with more and more people passing that were around at the time, even finding out the name of the paper to search for it that way is becoming more and more difficult.

I for one would love to be the one to find a copy of that paper in a garage sale somewhere. :)

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#15 Post by Jerry_Jelinek » Tue Aug 31, 2004 1:30 pm

I have no dance experience, so I approached this from a historical perspective. Here is what I found :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lindy_Hop# ... _Lindy_Hop
Classic Era (1927 to 1935)

This era was inspired by Ragtime jazz. Lindy Hop evolved from the combination of Breakaway and Charleston. Dancers, like George Snowden (Shorty George), that opened up Breakaway and Charleston. The partners moved closer together and further apart while spinning, to make the moves more interesting, eventually creating the swing out.

George Snowden renamed the dance from Breakaway to Lindy Hop at dance contests at the Harvest Moon Ball in Central Park in September 1927 or at the Savoy Ballroom in 1928 (the story varies). Lindy Hop was named in honor of Charles Lindbergh's trans-Atlantic airplane flight in 1927. In slang of the late 1800s and early 1900s, a lindy was a young woman; it was also the popular nickname of aviator Lindbergh, often called "Lucky Lindy" (although he personally disliked the nickname).

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