Here’s how to make jazz music sound more like “swing”

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 alternating notes by a measure of 30 milliseconds can improve swing in jazz music.

Jazz artists have rated music with these delayed rhythms as seven times more likely to have swing than music without delay.

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 an important role in creating the swing effect in jazz.

Theo Geisel and his colleagues used a three-song solo part (The Smudge, Texas Blues, and Jordu) to alter the music to produce intentional delays on “highlights”.

Downbeats are like the strokes a conductor might make (as opposed to the downbeats between strokes).

In one instance, the writers pushed the soloist downbeats back by 30 milliseconds. In another condition, the writers pushed back both highlights and setbacks.

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

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

This increased likelihood of a higher rating for the swing of the music was substantial.

Compared to the piece without any delays, there was no noticeable change in the music which had delays on both upbeats and offbeats.

The authors demonstrate that deliberate delays in the downbeats of solo jazz music dramatically increase their swing note, providing further evidence that such delays are an essential component of jazz swing.

The authors would like to point out that their previous research found that random note changes did not improve the swing note.

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

Additionally, the authors examined over 450 performances by solo jazz musicians and found that these downbeat delays were found in nearly every performance.

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

The authors conclude that identifying the systematic influence of downbeat delay on swing contributes to a more accurate definition of swing in jazz music.

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

Source: 10.1038/s42005-022-00995-z

Image credit: Getty

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