Hi-Hat - swingy groove help

[staticcast]

#1 the easiest and most familiar is the traditional hip hop swung high hat line which can be expressed as STRAIGHT 8th notes (8 hits occuring evenly over a bar) then swinging every second one late. This is also, technically, a triplet (if swung late enough) with the middle note left out (like someone already said here).

Not sure what you're trying to say here. Is every 8th note played straight, or not?

If so, and the notes in between are lagging, that's just 16th note swing. If every other 8th note is lagging, then the 8th notes AREN'T played straight, and that's 8th note swing. End of story.

Things get more confusing when you enter into 16th note territory. Like it's been said by a couple people in this thread, swing CAN BE ACHIEVED with straight 16ths.

No it can't. If all the notes are straight, there's no swing. You can have GROOVE with straight 16ths, you can have SYNCOPATION, you can have FEEL, you can have a big muthafuckin beat, whatever, but it's not swing. Swing is a very specific feel, and you get it by delaying the in-between notes. Whether you do that by warping a grid, or leaving out the middle note of a triplet, doesn't matter.

Reso is the best example of this IMO, Otacon is a lot of straight 16 yet there is an undeniable swing.

It's a great groove, and it does have a kinda loping feel, but that's not swing.

[Swung 16th notes are DIFFERENT MATHEMATICALLY than the traditional triplet-based swing of example #1. You achieve those by swinging straight 16th notes off the grid slightly. Reso again shows us the way. My guess is that most people wanting to use more swing would want to start here.[/quote]

Not following here. How is this different from swinging 16ths?

****The traditional swing where the first and last note of a triplet are used. This is hip-hop / jazz 101. Full triplet-over-four grooves are much rarer, but they exist, and in my opinion are a damn strong approach to half-step. But for the sake of education, this is a nice example of simply swung high hats that are rooted in triplets, but are not FULL triplets:

This is a kind of odd example, since the tempo is too fast to be halftime and too slow to be normal time. If you slowed it down to 70bpm then you'd get the dubstep equivalent of 8th note swing, which would sound a bit weird. If you sped it up to 140, you'd get 16th note swing, but with the snare on 2 and 4 instead of the usual dubstep 3.

****Straight 16 where highly articulated high hats, proper sampling with velocity changes, and interesting kick variations give "swing".

Not swing.

****Or swung 16th notes which is a popular approach for dubstep, 2step and garage.

...which is the same as (1).

[madmeesh]

Haha nice - ripped me a new one ><
EDIT: I think you're probably right on all counts..except if you are in any way equating 8th note swing with 16th note swing. I still think of those as different and mathematically incompatible.
I chose the Blasta tune because I thought it had a good example of 8th note swing, if you were to view it as in and around 140BPM, where it is actually much faster. Thanks for the insight!

[staticcast]

Haha nice - ripped me a new one ><
I want to explain where I'm coming from..tho i commend you on your obvious knowledge, and I welcome learning something new here, because I thought I had a grasp on it, but perhaps not!

point 1 - I'm talking about 8th note swing. For beginners, I was saying start straight, then swing every second one. Hip hop style, yknow?

point 2 - I concede that straight 16ths aren't "swing" perse...but they are groovy. I consider it swing in my own mind. But you are right on that one.

point 3 - I'm saying that 8th notes swung and 16th notes swung are different. People seem to be equating them in this thread, or not recognizing they are different.

OK - I don't understand you on the last point. You are saying that if the Blasta tune were viewed at 70bpm..it would be considered 8th note swung?
I think of that tune at 140..with 8th note swung. Am I wrong here? I then think of most Reso tunes as 16th note straight or swung.

I was also trying to establish that 8th note swung and 16th note swung are very different, as the 8th note swung is 2/3rds of a triplet.,

Haha, sorry. Didn't mean to come across as a prick. Here's what I make of it from the ground up....

First of all, note divisions: earlier examples of swing, namely jazz, had swung 8th notes, and if there was a backbeat then it was on 2 and 4, like this:



THIS is 8th note swing, and is what traditional musicians would refer to as "normal" time, especially in jazz. 8th note rhythms - swung sometimes, but not necessarily - and a backbeat on 2 and 4. (It doesn't have to be swung - very "standard"-feeling rock is played in normal time - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G7FdJajqxmU).

A "half-time shuffle" is something like the video below. You could feasibly count in swung 8th notes still, but the "halftime" feel is given by having the snare on 3, instead of 2 and 4:



(note that in the break at 0:51 it switches to normal time again)

BUT WAIT, you say, THAT'S NOT HALFTIME. Well, it's a kind of grey area. Compared to the first video, it's halftime, and on a big band drum chart you'd see "half-time shuffle" written at the top of the page. But over the past 50 years there've been so many tracks with this feel that people don't really think of it as halftime anymore. You could just as easily count this track at half the tempo, so that the snare is on 2 and 4 as you'd expect, so it's no longer halftime.... and then it's got 16th note swing, not 8th note swing. Anyway, it doesn't matter what you want to call it; what matters is that the rhythm in this track is counted in more or less the same way as most hiphop tracks - either it's normal time with 16th note swing, or halftime with 8th note swing. But the latter doesn't make much sense if you're talking about the majority of modern popular music, so IMHO it makes sense to refer to hiphop, breaks, house etc as being in normal time, with 16th note swing.

So where does dubstep come in? Well, if a jazz dude heard a Synkro track he'd probably call it half-half-time, but that's kinda taking the piss a bit. Easiest to call it 16th note swing in halftime. In other words, every counted beat has 4 divisions (16th notes), and the snare comes on the 3.

And the Blasta tune. Whichever way you look at it, it's counted like Rosanna in the video above. So if you play it at 140bpm, it'd mesh fine with dubstep, but the snare would be on 2 and 4 instead of on 3. If you slowed it down to 70bpm, the snares would be in the right place, but the swing would now be half of what it should be.

I think I get what you're trying to say, but in fact, rather than hiphop being swung 8ths and dubstep being swung 16ths, in fact they're both swung 16ths, but dubstep has a halftime feel.

[Sharmaji]

static cast knows what's up, and this should be required reading:

http://blackdownsoundboy.blogspot.com/2 ... -jazz.html

[madmeesh]

Nice dude! And I really didn't want to come across like I was the mystical guru of all things swing..it was just my way of understanding swing in terms of dubstep, and thinking about the tempo strictly as 140BPM no matter what. I think your way of looking at it takes into account groove structures from other genres which is very imporant.

Those vids were helpful. Obviously part of my confusion is the half-time/full-time thing.

[CMACD]

Yo, bring a track into your daw that you think has the kind of swung hats that you like. Determine the tempo, and look for yourself where the hats are, and their relation to the grid. Depending on your daw, you can create groove templates off of the swing that you find in your analysis track. Failing that you can just set up markers where the hats go, and slot your own hats in. All in the name of learning though, bro. This type of study will only get you part of the way down the path of writing dope ass hats, the reset will be how you creatively implement what you've learned from the masters you study.

Thanks so much for posting this, as I had the same dilemma as the OP. I guess I would have eventually thought of it anyways but yeah, thanks alot.

[nowaysj]

all of the secret formulas are right there on display, u only have to look!