Swing quarter notes
It would be great to have swing available on other note values than eighth and sixteenth. I have a piece with one 9/4 bar divided in 6, which corresponds to 4 quarter notes and four swing eighth notes. To have them payed correctly, I have to use triplets inside a 6/9 tuplet, which is a bit ackward. Of course, it's possible (and better to write them as straight eighths, but it will then play incorrectly
Comments
9/4 divided by six could be 6 dotted quarters like this
Or perhaps you want this
But how would swing on other durations help with either of those? And what have triplets got to do with it?
Or am I missing something?
In reply to 9/4 divided by six is 6… by SteveBlower
I originally made it like this:
Eventually, I replaced it with three 3/4 bars, in order to keep the whole thing consistent with the original form of the piece (four bar phrases). You solution might be simpler, although I wonder whether it would be more difficult to sight read, because it makes it less obvious that it's a 2 over three rhythm. But in any case, the question was about having a swing execution of a straight notation (since obviously, swing is not about triplets, although using triplets is often close enough to what is expected.) The solution I used is to have additional staves for playback and muting the notes in the main staves:
What would be useful is having swing for eight notes in tuplets, or in your solution, swing for dotted eighth notes. In other words, swing for any notes. Furthermore, a more adjustable swing would be useful, since the minimum is 25%. In the same piece, I need swing changing continuously from about 60% to straight, which I approximated with several "Swing" indications:
The result is not very ideal, though. Of course, no one needs that for notation, but if the playback is used for practicing, it should be as close as possible to the intended result.
IMHO, swing doesn't make sense for longer durations. No need for tuplets, most of the time, either.
![Screenshot_20240420_012253.png]( "Screenshot_20240420_012253.png")
In reply to IMHO, swing doesn't make… by underquark
In order to make sight reading easy, it's conventional to display straight notes when swing is intended. But to make the playback usable, it should be played as swing. And by the way, your solution produces a fixed 66.66% swing effect, when swing is much more variable (although not sufficiently configurable in Musescore!) For a Jazz player, the solution with duplets (as shown in my answer above) is far easier to read. The solution with triplets inside the duplets is totally acceptable for playback, but having to create additional invisible staves is not very practical. In short, swing doesn't make sense for other duration than eighths and sixteenths... as long as you don't need it!