Swing Rhythms
A swing rhythm can be created by tying together the first and second notes of a triplet. There are several different ways of writing swing rhythms. To understand them it is worth using one musical example written in various ways. First play example 83 which contains eighth note triplets.
Example 84 has the first and second notes of the triplet group tied. This gives the example a swing feel.
The two eighth note triplets tied together in example 84 can be replaced by a quarter note.
To simplify notation, it is common to replace the z with 6 , and to write at the start of the piece 6 = z as illustrated in example 86.
The two eighth note triplets tied together in example 84 can be replaced by a quarter note.
Examples 84, 85, and 86 sound exactly the same but are just written differently.
Here are some examples which contain swing rhythms. Remember, although the eighth notes are written as normal, they are played as swing eighths as indicated by the symbol before the start of each example.
This traditional New Orleans song has been played by many of the Jazz greats and was made famous by Louis Armstrong.
Notice that there are no slurs in this song. This means you will need to tongue all of the notes, even when there are many consecutive eighth notes.
Here is a final example which contains both swing, eighth notes and triplets.
