Playing a quarter note and an eighth note in triplet form in place of two eighth notes.
So this: |ADDC DEFG| would become this: |(3A2D (3D2C (3D2E (3F2G|
I just need a fast and easy way to instruct the player to play the tune in this fashion.
maybe a sound clip/video clip might explain this properly as I cannot see why you would want to do this in a reel (but I am most likely missing something)
It’s a bit like the swing in a hornpipe no?
The first part of this song is a perfect example. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RftRB1nyk-Y
Here’s another example: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=380Tgb6fIjM
Do you have any nice examples we could listen to?
I dunno. How about getting the player to listen to what you mean and telling them that’s what you want? If you give it a name they’ll do what they think that name means, which will probably not be what you want at all!
I think the technique you are looking for is not really a technique but more a style of playing ~ in this case, playing with a bit of swing
The term is “swing” Those folks are “swinging” the eighth notes. That is the term in jazz and I hear it regularly in various trad worlds too.
Ditto what Jeeves said. If you ‘ just need a fast and easy way to instruct the player’, maybe you shouldn’t rely on misleading terminology, but show him how to do it.
Exactly. Show the player how it should be done. In case he/she knows how to read written music, whatever you do, don’t notate the tune as something it isn’t (e.g. |ADDC DEFG| as (3A2D (3D2C (3D2E (3F2G|).
I recently transcribed ‘American Wake’ for someone. I’d agree the prominent effect is swing (I think of it as squeezing and stretching the time values of notes), but this is enhanced by the clever use of rests in the last section of some bars.
As an aside - what a brilliant bridge between the first and second tunes!
Sorry, my mistake : ‘clever use of rests’ should read ‘clever use of ties’.
Sounds like you want:
In a pair of 1/8 notes, to borrow some of the time value from the second note and add it to the first.
Basically, dotting the first note and halving the second.
You can indicate this in abc notation with > symbol:
ADDC DEFG becomes A>DD>C D>EF>G
Clear as mud? 🙂
No he doesn’t fidkid. In dotted rhythm A>D the first note is three times the length of the second, whereas in the OP’s notation (3A2D the first note is twice the length of the second. Big difference.
Swing length varies with the tempo and with the area in which the music is played. As already suggested it is better to notate straight 1/8 notes than try to approximate with triplet rhythms or dotted eighth/sixteenth rhythms.
(Apologies to the crochets and quavers folks…but I expect you can figure out my meanings…)
You’re correct of course, Jeeves Tones. I was thinking, by the nature of the question and the way it was asked, that the ‘player’ was a MIDI player, and the ‘greater than’ symbol is a quick, simple command to introduce a dotted swing.
Here’s an example of notating it using “Bridge Attack”
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15846346/Bridge%20Attack.pdf
and the midi:
https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/15846346/Bridge%20Attack.wav
That’s good stuff there, Hunter. Had to slow down the MIDI a little bit, though!
