Swing - synonyms

• Jun 9, 2015 - 22:03

Hi,

I have somehow problem to find the proper synonym (it could be one word or two or even three, four... word explanation) for that. I thing, that it could be somehow not well understood by reader/user, who sees it the first time, maybe for the second time, fourth..., what it does, when the description is only Swing. For me the Swing is connected more to musical style than something with the playback (or what it really is).

It is something with rhythm, change of rhythm... (?)


Comments

There really is no synonym in English. It is the only single word I know of to describe the specific rhythmic device: playing eighths notes not as all the same length, but with the first of each pair longer than the second. I assume every language has a word for this, and jazz musicians who speak that language should know it. What language are you trying to translate into? Czech?

In reply to by pfri

Nor I know of any other word already in use for compromise between the extremes of technical means & emotional end; but a number of partly overlapping patches along the way, for instance ‘agogics’ (as organic opposite to automatic ‘quantization’), ‘notes inégales’ (typicallly ‘double-/overdotting’ = rhythmic sharpening in baroque french tradition, i.e. realizing a notated dotted rhythm as double- or even triple-dotted, however the increase in dot value maybe stepless), in waltz the preposition of beat 2 making any piece ‘Wiener’, ‘blue’ notes, … – all amounting to idiomatic ‘feel’.

Swing is stuck in Swedish too.

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