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Producing a "swing feel" with MIDI Instruments?


Michael McBroom

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I did a search on this topic (i.e., "swing feel") here first thing, and I got only a couple of peripheral hits. So, I'm guessing it's not something that's widely discussed.

I'm working on a piece in "swing 8ths" right now. I imported a MIDI melody track that was already written with a swing feel, and I found it interesting in the way it wound up looking in the staff view. A lot of dotted 8th-16th groups, some triplets with the second note not voiced. The dotted 8th-16th rhythms sounded rather stilted, whereas the triplet ones sounded better. So I tried quantizing the track. I've never quantized anything before, so I just guessed at the values I plugged in. They seem to work okay, though, so I guess I just got lucky? In the Quantize dialog, I entered 1/8 as the note value and just guessed at 70% for the swing value. I didn't adjust any of the other parameters.

So, I'm curious what your preferred methods are when you're writing (or importing) swing parts. What works best for you?

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Cakewalk does not handle triplet notation well, but the mis-interpreted notation in the staff view won't affect the underlying timing of the MIDI events, it;s just a display issue. If the MIDI sounds wonkiy, it is wonky.  ;^)

I record everything in real time,  and it can be a chore to quantize because my stuff tends to be a mix of straight 16th, 8ths, 8th triplets and sometimes oddball figures like 3 in the time of 5/16.

Usually I have to selectively quantize small sections to the appropriate value. Sometimes I'll hard-quantize a copy of a pattern, and use it as a Groove-Quantize reference to percentage quantize relevant parts of the original track.

I never really think in terms of 'swing', and have seldom been able to get what I need with swing quantizing.

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I imported a horn part into this piece, a part that had a lot of dotted 8th-16th figures, so just guessing again, I set the time value for dotted 8th, and then just played around with the other parameters. After quite a bit of experimentation, I came up with a strength of 75% and a swing of 70%. This changed the dotted 8ths to 8ths, and isolated the 16ths. The result was the best I've been able to come up with so far. Still a little edgy in parts, but overall, a swing feel predominates. So I'm somewhat satisfied with the results. I think, though, if I'm going to try to write a part with a swing feel, I'll use triplets and be done with it. Hardcore jazzophiles will tell you that swing and triplets are two different things, but I dunno if I'm willing to split those hairs at this point.

 

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Huh. How'd I miss the MIDI quantize plug-in? OK, so I tried it out on the melody track. Set it to  quantize both start times and durations. Left everything else alone except for "swing," which I changed to 70%. I've had reasonably good luck with the value so far. And I gave it a spin.

Hey, it works pretty well. A few isolated 16ths are getting jerked around some, but I think I can tame them once I've focused in on the individual problem ones.

Interesting -- in the sheet music, it's retained all the dotted 8th-16th figures. Oh well, as long as it's giving the tune the correct feel, I don't care how CW shows them.

 

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