How do I swing harder?

Agreed on all the above. But, I'd say that swinging articulation is key for more than just the ride cymbal. I don't think eddie meant to say that it was, just clarifying to anyone reading.

One of the things I see the most from students and people new to jazz drumming is stiff articulation of nearly every phrase they play whether it be basic time playing on the ride, comping on the SD/BD or solo phrasing. I think the sooner you get into thinking about it and practicing the physical motions required to do it, the better.

Jim's book goes a long way to helping one understand swing articulation but doesn't go into the physical execution for obvious reasons. But, forgetting technique, the most important resource to research is the entire discography of jazz. I think you need to start in the 20s and 30s and work your way forward in time. Whatever you do, don't dive in with modern jazz or even bop. There's just so much going on. Stick to early recordings and/or big band recordings from the 30s, 40s and 50s where the rhythm sections are there to generate a feeling more than be full members of an interactive conversation. If you haven't checked out Gene Krupa with Benny Goodman, you have no business trying to penetrate more modern playing. You can do far worse than to sit down and listen to the entire Count Basie catalogue or Frank Sinatra's swing years with Irv Cottler smacking out backbeats with authority.

Listen to the drummers. But don't just listen to the drummers. We're too drum-centric. Listen to the horn players, piano players and the vocalists, too. Go through an entire album just zeroing on the double bass. That's where you'll learn to articulate - by imitating the way the human voice, wind instruments and the bass play swung figures and trying your level best to express that via the drums. I consciously try to pick up on the way my double bassist phrases their skip notes and put mine in a complimentary (if not the same) place. Listen to how the piano players phrased their offbeat notes and put your skip notes in the same place.

Learn the melodies. If you don't know the heads to the standards, you won't ever swing. Learn to sing the melodies in the correct style, then try to play them on the drums. Start with playing them on one surface (RC or SD, for instance) and then move to trying to play them on the drums. A classic melody like "Sunny Side of the Street" played by - say - Louis Armstrong has a wealth of information in it about how to phrase and articulate.

Sure, you won't always be soloing or playing figures in that way, but I think this exercise will go a long way to helping a student learn to generate the proper rhythmic undercurrent on the drums to support what's going on out front. Because, in the end, it's about what's going on out front (another way of saying "play for the song!") that matters.

Simply put, Step 1 is Imitate. Imitate. Imitate.

Beautiful post! Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.... Sometimes I just assume these things are "implied" when I am very wrong to do so.

Listening to and understanding the history of the music can't be said enough. It's not only critical, there is no other way. Start and The Hot 5's / Hot 7's and move from there.

Anyone who listens to Armstrong and says it doesn't swing doesn't deserve to play the genre or is so lost in the music that they have no other choice than to go back to the very beginning.
 
Beautiful post! Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.... Sometimes I just assume these things are "implied" when I am very wrong to do so.

Listening to and understanding the history of the music can't be said enough. It's not only critical, there is no other way. Start and The Hot 5's / Hot 7's and move from there.

Anyone who listens to Armstrong and says it doesn't swing doesn't deserve to play the genre or is so lost in the music that they have no other choice than to go back to the very beginning.

I might be missing something, but what are the HOT 5's and Hot 7's?
 
brady you may have just asked the question that will fill in the very important gap that you didn't even know was there :)

Amen. And can lead to so much more....

Example "swing hard" phrasing...

Please watch this 3:25 clip in it's entirety. It's much later than the Hot 5's / 7's but just watch and listen to this clip and see what happens beginning around the 1:12 mark. It is beyond category, it is genius. This is "swinging harder".... Just look at Sinatra smile and shake his head. You can even here the response from the crowd that's not shown in the clip.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sYdUGoIqUM
 
Amen. And can lead to so much more....

Example "swing hard" phrasing...

Please watch this 3:25 clip in it's entirety. It's much later than the Hot 5's / 7's but just watch and listen to this clip and see what happens beginning around the 1:12 mark. It is beyond category, it is genius. This is "swinging harder".... Just look at Sinatra smile and shake his head. You can even here the response from the crowd that's not shown in the clip.... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7sYdUGoIqUM

Thanks so much. That just made my lunch hour.

I thought that referred to a sticking pattern or something. Stupid me, I wasn't even thinking of the record. That's Baby Dodds on most of that, right?
 
Thanks so much. That just made my lunch hour.

I thought that referred to a sticking pattern or something. Stupid me, I wasn't even thinking of the record. That's Baby Dodds on most of that, right?

Yes, much of it was Baby Dodds. Also within that span are Paul Barbarian, Tubby Hall, Kaiser Marshall & Zutty Singleton.
 
Lots of interesting responses here.

For me, and I'll start by saying that jazzy and swing stuff is relatively new to my playing, it took a bit to sound good in a "swinging" context. Coming from a rock background, at first I found the whole feel and style of swinging to be so alien that each time I attempted I just wasn't really getting it. The notes were in the "right" place within the beat... The tempo was relatively correct, but my playing inflections and accents didn't feel good... They didn't swing.

Anyway... This thread is interesting. I still can't even really give someone a definite definition of what "swinging" a beat actually is, but I can hear it... That came from tons and tons of listening. I got up close and personal with the jazz I liked for a long time and now I listen to lots of it. The more I hear and study, the more my playing swings when I want to.

Dancin' about architecture, I say.
 
Beautiful post! Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes.... Sometimes I just assume these things are "implied" when I am very wrong to do so.

Listening to and understanding the history of the music can't be said enough. It's not only critical, there is no other way. Start and The Hot 5's / Hot 7's and move from there.

Anyone who listens to Armstrong and says it doesn't swing doesn't deserve to play the genre or is so lost in the music that they have no other choice than to go back to the very beginning.

This is a great masterclass with Branford Marsalis. It's worth the 19 minutes of anyone's time, but he gets right to this point around 2:20 in or so when talking about lessons learned from Wayne Shorter:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3sFBk3ZU_o
 
Dancin' about architecture, I say.

One of the troubles with jazz is that it's come to be this way, or at least make people feel this way. It wasn't always like that. Louis Armstrong's stuff is a perfect example: it's good time party music for dancing. Big Band swing was about dancing and the sort of "top down" approach that characterises jazz drumming since the bop era was nowhere to be found yet. Those guys played the bass drum for people to dance to. The bottom up approach using the bass drum and snare to drive the music wasn't an invention of Rock, it was already there in early jazz and swing drumming but it was left behind as drummers sought new means of expressing themselves and becoming more interactive parts of the band. (Nothing wrong with that, BTW) Kenny Clarke is often credited with forcing through the major change from keeping time with the bass drum and hihat to keeping it primarily with the ride. He lost gigs and even took a lot of heat from the musicians of the time over it. But, I think the innovation was great.

Of course, even in the bop era a lot of the music still had its roots in danceable swing that came before it. Accounts of Dizzy Gillespie from those who knew him say he was forever concerned with rhythm, rhythm and more rhythm and you can hear it in his music. Even when he's playing screaming million-notes-a-minute bop solos the rhythm section is churning along in an easily accessible way and the phrasing of his solos is obvious enough to even a casual listener, IMO. If you ignore all the technique involved the feeling he's going for is rooted in the body and dance, not in some intellectual harmonic exercise.

It's only later that things started to fly away in a rocket ship that's so high up in the stratosphere now that just about no one short of jazz academics can see it. And that includes people like me who grew up on jazz. I find a lot of modern jazz completely un-listenable because its lost all touch with its rhythmic roots and with communication with a broad spectrum of people. I don't want to have to focus every last bit of mental energy I have just to grock what's going on. I want the music to create a mood and a feeling. There are enough things in the world that encourage overthinking and analysis, I don't want my music to be the same way.

Of course, YMMV and have all the respect in the world for people who do make that sort of thing their pursuit and do it with passion and dedication. I certainly won't pretend to have the technical and harmonic facility the modern jazz superheroes have. Who am I to judge THEM? It's just that I probably won't be buying their albums when they go for that "no note left behind" thing.
 
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