Jazz Swing Tutorial
by Eddie Lewis
Before we get started with this jazz swing tutorial, I must emphasize the importance of listening to swing jazz first, before you try to learn how to swing. These tutorials use swing study exercises to help you practice the jazz swing feel, but these exercises will be absolutely useless to anyone who does not spend time listening to jazz swing music.
I have long said that “listening is more important than practicing” and this statement rings true for everyone learning how to perform with a jazz swing feel. Please keep this in mind as you read the rest of this tutorial.
My Experience
In my experience as a judge for various jazz competitions, the most common problem in the students’ jazz performances is their lack of swing. Other judges may have had different experiences, but my observation is that at least half of the contestants (both jazz bands and individuals) have no concept of swing. They either perform with a “ricky-tick” swing or they don’t swing at all.
My approach to teaching jazz students how to swing is probably different from most other jazz educators (based on what I’ve read). I do not address jazz swing as a rhythm. If I say anything about the rhythm to my students, I only say that jazz swing rhythm is “lopsided”. I never say that swing is a triplet. But even the lopsided thing, I typically don’t mention it unless I think it’s going to help. Which is rarely.
Swing as an Articulation
Instead, I teach swing as an articulation. How and when we place our slurs and accents is what makes the music swing. The lopsided rhythm comes naturally when we get that right.
Here’s a very interesting story from my past. Decades ago, I remember hearing a jazz educator tell his band that “you don’t swing at faster tempos”. If you are a jazz educator, here’s a very important piece of advice for you:
NEVER TELL YOUR JAZZ BAND NOT TO SWING!!!
Of course, I understand what he was trying to say. As the tempos increase, the lopsidedness of the swing rhythm begins to even out. The problem with telling students not to swing is that swing is not a rhythm. Yes, there are rhythmic elements in swing music, but just playing triplets doesn’t mean you are swinging.
And I believe this is why there are so many students playing ricky-tick jazz style today. They are playing triplet rhythms without the all-important jazz swing articulations. As a judge, I would much rather hear a jazz student play straight rhythmically, but with the articulations that make the music swing! The articulations, in this context, are far more important than the rhythm, in the sense that the articulations give us the correct rhythm.
The General Rule
As a general rule (a rule which is often broken), jazz swing involves slurring upbeats to downbeats. This is what gives the rhythm it’s lopsidedness.
If a student comes to me with a written piece of jazz swing music, the first thing I do with them is have them write the slurs. But please understand that this is a mental exercise. The assignment is not for the purposes of giving them something to read. Writing the slurs in their jazz music is a slow motion version of what they will be doing when they perform jazz swing music. I want them to be able to reason their way through the chart with their conscious minds first.
Also very important is that I correct their mistakes immediately. So this the writing assignment is not “homework”. They need to do the assignment in front of me so I can correct them immediately after they finish. I want them to understand the concept before we begin playing the piece. The official assignment is that they will write slurs from all of the upbeats to the downbeat.
A common problem is that the students do not immediately recognize which notes fall on the upbeat and which fall on the downbeat. For an accomplished jazz musician, this recognition is instinctive and automatic, but for the beginner jazz student, they must think through it first. That’s the point of the written assignment.
And I only mention this assignment at this point of the tutorial to emphasize how important the slurs are for authentic jazz swing. For now, we are not working with actual pieces of jazz swing music. It’s ideal that the students learn to swing before they have music to learn.
Jazz swing style requires legato tongued accents on most upbeat eighth-notes.
Legato Accents
Another important aspect of jazz swing style is the legato accents. These accents are typically on the same upbeat as we are slurring from. This page has several images of what this looks like. There’s an accent on the upbeat and also the beginning of a slur.
There is a very strange trumpet pedagogy I have encountered that teaches the students to “accent with your tongue”. According to this way of teaching, an accent is nothing more than tonguing harder. Students who have been taught this way will always struggle with a jazz swing feel.
I learned about the “hard tonguing” accents by working with a student who was taught this way.
I once had a student who had a lot of trouble with jazz swing. Whenever I asked her to add accents to the music, she would revert back to ricky-tick swing with staccato downbeats. When I investigated why she was doing this, asking her to describe what was happening in her mouth, she said she was stopping the air to “tongue harder”. That’s when I discovered this strange, new trumpet pedagogy. She was one of those who was taught that accents are created by only tonguing harder.
Even as a classical player/teacher, I disagree with this approach. Accents are created from the abdomen. An accent is generated from bursts of air. I remember when my teacher, Dave Robins, asked me to put my hand on his belly so I could feel how he was doing the accents in a jazz piece. I could feel his abdomen contracting for each accent and I heard how that was effecting the style of the music.
When I learned that some teachers were teaching this new, terrible method of accenting, I brought it up online. Some woman told me that the way I was teaching was “old school” (to which I would say “thank you very much”). They apparently don’t teach traditional accents anymore because they have fear of “body tension”. They believe traditional accents cause body tension, which they avoid as if it is a religious offence.
I’m sorry, that doesn’t fly with me.
I asked them how they accent slurred notes and they didn’t have an answer. Which really is ridiculous.
Jazz swing style is a legato style with heavy accents. The harder you swing, the more heavy the accents become…with very little change in the legato style of the tongue.
Upbeat Accents
The accents in jazz swing are typically applied to the upbeats, which are the same notes being tongued in the upbeat to downbeat slur pattern. Remember, it’s legato tongue with a puff of air, applied to the upbeats.
When you first learn to swing, you should legato accent every upbeat and then slur to every downbeat. This pattern is later broken quite often, depending on the musical context. But it’s important for beginners to begin by applying this swing pattern to everything. Just like everything else you learn that is new to you, you need to exaggerate it first. You want it to be so engrained into your mind, and so habitual, and automatic, that you almost can’t stop playing that way.
Part of the purpose of this article to help high school students prepare for their All-State Jazz auditions. It’s important to be good at jazz swing before you begin practicing the swing etudes. Just slurring upbeats to downbeats in the All-State Jazz music will not get you into the All-State band. As I said earlier, that pattern is broken according to the musical context. So it is very important to master the swing feel long before the All-State Jazz music is released.
That’s why I’m releasing these Jazz Swing tutorials. This is for the students who want to do better on the swing stuff before the music is comes out.
That said, these Jazz Swing tutorials work just as beautifully for anyone interested in learning to play in that style. The information and exercises in this tutorial are not just a gimmick to help students win contests. No, this is how I teach everyone how to swing.
Not Written
It’s important to note that the slurs and accents we have discussed here are not explicitly written into the sheet music. It’s not uncommon for an entire chart to be absent of written slurs. This does not mean that you don’t slur.
I like to tell my students that the slurs are interpretive, meaning that you should slur where it sounds good for you to slur. As stated above, the upbeat to downbeat slur is the general rule, but the rule is broken according to your musical preferences, given the context.
I have been submitting jazz etudes to the Texas Jazz Educators Association for over ten years now. These etudes are used as audition music to get into the Texas All-State Jazz Ensemble. In the past few years I have been tempted to write the slurs into the etudes. It just seems to me that this is something that isn’t being taught. This year I left the slurs out, again, because that’s what is proper. I only mention it here because you need to know that the slurs are not notated in jazz sheet music.
This may change as fewer people know how to play jazz swing. My swing style trumpet ensembles have the slurs written because I know that most students looking for trumpet ensemble music are not actually jazz players. But as of now, unwritten slurs is still the norm in genuine swing music.
Swing Studies
The following video contains a series of swing studies that you can practice. It is presented in call and response format. I play the exercise first, then you wait for the proper number of beats before you play it.
We begin the video with simply saying the word “Bebop”. The word “Bebop” gives you the lopsided rhythm, combined with the legato/accented upbeat. The “Be” syllable flows into the “bop” syllable. You don’t say “Be” [silence] “bop”, with a gap between the two syllables. No, you run them together with a natural flow between the notes.
After we say the word “Bebop” ten times, then we go through a sequence of exercises on the horn. Each exercise is repeated ten times. If you have difficulty with one of the exercises, then roll the video back to do it again. Do not advance from one exercise to the next without mastering it first.
What are you looking for in your own playing on these exercises?
You are looking for everything we discussed above. There is no separation between the notes. Everything is legato tongued with accents on the upbeats being generated with puffs of air from your abdomen.
Try to match my style exactly. This is why the videos are in call and response format. Listen to me play the exercise first, then you play it exactly the same way as I did.
Here is the first beginner video: