Can I swing duplets?

[Tim Mariott]

Back again with another "swing" question: my brain still struggles with swing.

In measures 2 and 4 of "Goodnight Sweetheart", our MD wants the first 4 eighth notes to be swung in pairs (di-dum-di-dum) but all of the commands and examples I have found seem to refer only to triplets.

Is it possible to swing a duplet of eighth notes or is this just another example of my misunderstanding of swing rhythm?

The attached file is how the piece needs to be printed so I am just trying to create learning tracks with the required swing rhythm.

Thanks
Tim

[Sherry C]

Hi Tim,


Thanks for including the file - fun piece!


The "swing" for 8th note pairs is what most "swing" notation is all about - our big band does this all the time. The notation on the sheet "looks" straight, but the musicians understand that the first note gets about double the duration of the second note for the performance. It just saves ink and looks a lot less complicated if you understand that "Swing" means that duration difference.


So typically this would be an easy conversion with the nifty "convert to swing performance" button, but because of the 8th note rest before the first note, the timing in the underlying triplet timing gets messed up.


The good news is that you can do this manually, though, using the Piano Roll feature (in Help/User Guide use the Index to navigate to "piano roll, manually entering values"). You can use Piano Roll, and then only edit the "as performed" aspect - the notation will stay the same, but the audio playback will differ depending on how you adjust the durations and attacks for the notes. Typical "swing" is

• first note (for 8th note pairs) has an Attack of 0 and a duration of 320
• second note (for 8th note pairs) has an Attack of +80 and duration of 153

I do have a question, though, for this song particularly. If it's the rhythm that I'm familiar with for this tune, it's almost like a "reverse swing."


In other words, typical swing has the first note of the pair as the longer duration and the second note as the shorter duration (see adjustment values above). Fortunately you can edit the performance of the notes without affecting the notation either way.


Hope this helps!


ttfn,
Sherry

[Tim Mariott]

Sherry

Thank you for your patience - I knew that you would have a solution! I can experiment with the Piano Roll and see if I can approach what our MD requires.

We have a relatively new (female) MD and she has enough problems dealing with 16 old blokes so I try to ease her burden where I can.

Best wishes
Tim