The 2 ternary swings

[komadich]

Hi guys,

I tried to compose a couple of examples of the two ternary swings used in W.African music. I would be pleased if someone could check the site I posted to and give me some feedback on it.
http://t-tt-t-tt-sss.blogspot.com/2009/07/djembe-patterns-of-swinged-tripplets.html
Thanks!

[bubudi]

hi andrej, i think it's great that you are doing something to demonstrate differences in swing. this is really lacking not only on the internet but in many large classes, too. i consider swing to be one of the most important aspects of playing this music so i welcome your efforts!

but i need to ask why you are generating these examples with percussion studio instead of recording yourself playing. other people on these forums have said that the control in placement of notes is too coarse with percussion studio. indeed when i hear the first accompaniment played with the two different types of swing in your examples, they sound exaggerated. i'd much prefer to hear you play these examples or use a short section of a recording from one of your teachers.

by the way, just to correct your english, we say 'swung', not 'swinged'

[komadich]

Bubudi, thanks for your reply. Yes, indeed it sounds strange. This is why I'm asking for a second opinion. I wanted to exaggerate a little bit, but maybe I got too far... I hope I didn't go in the wrong direction, tho:) The first and second accompainment in both rhythms have the same amount of swing - mathematically speaking - but yeah, the first acc. in the first rhythm sounds quite odd. Perhaps one should never swing this particular accompaniment so hard, what do you think?
The written resources about this are scarce indeed. I wonder why nobody amongst the several authors of "rhythm collection" books never mentions this. Perhaps this is the first thing one should know about the rhythm together with the time and measure.

I thought of posting some samples from my masters myself, but then I thought that I shouldn't do that without asking first.

Thanks for the "English hint". I would have written in my own language, but then I would have something like 2 readers per year:)

[hans]

Hi Andrej, I'm especially interested that your teachers had names for these swings - Father an Mother - as I've never come across names for swing types before, and it would be really useful to have names to refer to them. Which teachers used those names? - and do you think they only started categorising the swing types once students asked awkward questions, or did the naming and categorising seem to go deeper than that? Did the 2 swing types have any other associations/connotations? thanks in advance...

[komadich]

Which teachers used those names? - and do you think they only started categorising the swing types once students asked awkward questions, or did the naming and categorising seem to go deeper than that?

I first heard about that from Sega Sidibe. Otherwise, Marakadon and others are commonly referred to as "demba" rhythms, which would mean mother's rhythms.

On the other hand, I tried to ask sometimes to which family this or that rhythm belongs but some teachers would give me a strange response, something as: "There is no family of rhythms". Once Sidiki Camara told me: "Don't categorize rhythms in families because this is where the problems begin."