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    Acoustical Society of America ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 Meeting Lay Language Papers

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    Anonymous F4YGUk9f
    This study measured the swing ratio, or the relative timing of long and short eighth notes, in jazz drumming at different tempos. The researchers analyzed commercial jazz recordings of top drummers like Tony Williams and found that the swing ratio increases from around 1 at fast tempos to nearly 3.5 at slow tempos. They also had listeners adjust computer-generated jazz performances and found similar results, with slower tempos preferred longer short notes. Additionally, the duration of the short note remained around 100 milliseconds for most tempos, indicating a perceptual limit for note length. In summary, the study showed that jazz drummers' swing ratio varies significantly with tempo rather than remaining fixed at around 2.

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    Acoustical Society of America ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 Meeting Lay Language Papers

    Uploaded by

    Anonymous F4YGUk9f
    56 views3 pages
    This study measured the swing ratio, or the relative timing of long and short eighth notes, in jazz drumming at different tempos. The researchers analyzed commercial jazz recordings of top drummers like Tony Williams and found that the swing ratio increases from around 1 at fast tempos to nearly 3.5 at slow tempos. They also had listeners adjust computer-generated jazz performances and found similar results, with slower tempos preferred longer short notes. Additionally, the duration of the short note remained around 100 milliseconds for most tempos, indicating a perceptual limit for note length. In summary, the study showed that jazz drummers' swing ratio varies significantly with tempo rather than remaining fixed at around 2.

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    Jazz Drummers

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    Jazz Drummers

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    This study measured the swing ratio, or the relative timing of long and short eighth notes, in jazz drumming at different tempos. The researchers analyzed commercial jazz recordings of top drummers like Tony Williams and found that the swing ratio increases from around 1 at fast tempos to nearly 3.5 at slow tempos. They also had listeners adjust computer-generated jazz performances and found similar results, with slower tempos preferred longer short notes. Additionally, the duration of the short note remained around 100 milliseconds for most tempos, indicating a perceptual limit for note length. In summary, the study showed that jazz drummers' swing ratio varies significantly with tempo rather than remaining fixed at around 2.

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    56 views3 pages

    Acoustical Society of America ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 Meeting Lay Language Papers

    Uploaded by

    Anonymous F4YGUk9f
    This study measured the swing ratio, or the relative timing of long and short eighth notes, in jazz drumming at different tempos. The researchers analyzed commercial jazz recordings of top drummers like Tony Williams and found that the swing ratio increases from around 1 at fast tempos to nearly 3.5 at slow tempos. They also had listeners adjust computer-generated jazz performances and found similar results, with slower tempos preferred longer short notes. Additionally, the duration of the short note remained around 100 milliseconds for most tempos, indicating a perceptual limit for note length. In summary, the study showed that jazz drummers' swing ratio varies significantly with tempo rather than remaining fixed at around 2.

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    of 3

    ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 - Jazz Drummers' Swing Ratio in Relation to Tempo

    31-05-2005 0:47

    Acoustical Society of America


    ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 Meeting
    Lay Language Papers
    [ Lay Language Paper Index | Press Room ]

    Jazz Drummers' Swing Ratio in Relation to Tempo


    Anders Friberg, andersf@speech.kth.se
    Andreas Sundstrm
    Royal Institute of Technology
    Dept. of Speech, Music and Hearing
    SE-100 44 Stockholm
    Sweden
    Popular version of paper 5aMUb10 to tempo.
    Presented Friday morning, March 19, 1999
    ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 Meeting, Berlin, Germany

    Introduction
    Rhythm is one of the most important ingredients in jazz music. Jazz must "swing". An essential part of this is the
    rhythmic concept called "swing eighth note pattern". This means that eighth notes are performed in patterns of
    long-short-long-short. These uneven patterns not only occur in jazz but are also common in folk and popular
    music, as well as in classical Baroque music.
    What is not known is the exact relation between the long and the short note. It is not specified in the score and
    music students are often advised to learn it by listening to recordings. Such knowledge would contribute to the
    understanding of the perception and production of music. It would also be useful for generating synthetic
    performances on a MIDI sequencer, as well as being helpful for students who wish to learn how to swing.
    The purpose of this study was to measure the relation between the long and short note (henceforth swing ratio)
    for different tempi. We did this in two ways: (1) by measuring recorded performances of well-known drummers,
    and (2) by letting listeners adjust the swing ratio in a synthesized jazz performance.

    1. Measurements of drummer's swing ratio


    We focused here on the drummer's ride cymbal. This is an important contribution to the swing feel in a jazz
    ensemble. We used commercial "classic" jazz recordings of well-known drummers. The drummers were Tony

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    ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 - Jazz Drummers' Swing Ratio in Relation to Tempo

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    Williams with the Miles Davis Quintet; Jack DeJohnette with the Keith Jarrett Trio, Jeff Watts with the Wynton
    Marsalis Quartet and Adam Nussbaum playing on an Aebersold Play-a-long CD.
    The results indicate that the swing ratio varies considerably for different tempi. This is illustrated in the left graph
    of Figure 1, where each mark represents the swing ratio and tempo for each song on the records. A swing ratio of
    1 means that the eighth notes are of equal length and a swing ratio of 2 means that the long eighth note is exactly
    twice as long as the short eighth note. We see in the figure that for fast tempi, the swing ratio reaches 1 and that
    for successively slower tempi, the swing ratio gradually increases to almost 3.5. Note that the latter in musical
    terms is more than a dotted eighth note followed by a sixteenth note. Interestingly, these differences in swing ratio
    are not at all in agreement with the common conception which states that the swing ratio is close to 2, also
    referred to as "triple feel".

    Figure 1. Swing ratio as a function of tempo (left) and absolute duration of "short" note as a function of tempo
    (right) for the four drummers and all excerpts. Each mark represents an average from each song. Observe that
    the slowest excerpt by DeJohnette (72 bpm) is outside the range of the right graph (duration of 2nd note = 416
    ms).
    The right graph in Figure 1 contains the same data but plotted differently. Here the vertical axis represents the
    duration of the "short" note in milliseconds. It reveals that there is an approximately constant duration of the
    "short" note of about 100 ms for medium to fast tempi. This value coincides with the shortest notes used for a
    melodic line in jazz. It is also in agreement with nerve response times both for auditory and visual stimuli. All this
    indicates that in order for individual tones to be perceived, they cannot be shorter then about 0.1 second.

    2. Listeners' adjustment of preferred swing ratio


    Here we measured the swing ratio according to the listeners preference. By using computer-generated jazz trio
    performances, it was possible to adjust the swing ratio to any value. A total of 34 listeners were asked to adjust the
    swing ratio (without seeing the actual value) to a musically optimal position. The music example was a
    performance of the first eight bars of Charlie Parkers "Yardbird Suite". All instruments were created from
    samples of real instruments.
    The resulting swing ratio averaged over listeners is shown in Figure 2. The same tendency as in the measurement
    of drummers is evident with an increasing swing ratio for slower tempi and decreasing swing ratio for faster tempi.

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    ASA/EAA/DAGA '99 - Jazz Drummers' Swing Ratio in Relation to Tempo

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    Figure 2. Listeners preferred swing ratio as a function of tempo. The bars indicate 95% confidence intervals.

    Conclusion
    The swing ratio (i.e. the ratio between two subsequent eighth notes) was found to vary substantially with tempo.
    The common conception among musicians that the swing ratio is close to 2 (the first note is twice as long as the
    second) was not confirmed. On the contrary, the duration of the second note was found to be constant at about
    0.1 seconds for medium to fast tempi. This indicated that the second note had reached a limit of tone duration that
    corresponded to the shortest tone that can be individually perceived within a melodic line.

    Sound examples
    Synthesized examples of different swing ratios are found here:
    http://www.speech.kth.se/music/performance/Texts/inegales.htm

    [ Lay Language Paper Index | Press Room ]

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