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Each year, I treat my students to learning a couple of pop or jazz selections, as we have a community-wide Pop, Jazz & Duet Fest. When teaching swing, do you find it works better to have the students learn the notes first, then add the swing, or just dive in and learn the music with the swing rhythm? Generally, I do the latter, but have been wondering if students would have faster results note learning first.
"Those who dare to teach must never cease to learn." -- Richard Henry Dann Full-time Private Piano Teacher offering Piano Lessons in Olympia, WA. www.mypianoteacher.com Certified by the American College of Musicians; member NGPT, MTNA, WSMTA, OMTA
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Hi John, I teach the swing rhythm first and then add the notes. It's easier to correct notes than it is to correct rhythm IMO. So I am assuming it could take longer to teach notes first and then change the rhythm to swing. Do you find that when you change the rhythm, the student then misses notes?
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I always swing it. It really helps to do some echo practice in that first lesson, one or two measures at a time. Once they get the feel of it, it usually works for the rest of the piece.
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As a beginner-guitarist I find it much easier to learn the notes straight, and only swing once I am confident of the notes. The reason? It's hard to go quick from off-beat to on-beat when my fingers are still finding their way.
I'm interested to hear how other teach swing, though.
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I always swing it! It's the rhythm that matters more than the pitches in this instance... (Ok... not THAT much, but the rhythm is hugely important and difficult to grasp for a 'normal close minded' piano student).
Then again knowing you, John, I can safely assume that your students are nothing close to being close minded! ^_^
But... yeah... swing all the way from the beginning. This is the charm of these works!
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Some kids get swing immediately. Some take a bit longer. Some will struggle mightily.
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In all the pieces I teach, we start with rhythm. I want kids to be able to clap and count a piece start to finish. It may only take 2 lines to let me know that they are capable of clapping entire rhythm. If there are words, we clap and speak the words in rhythm.
I tell them that the rhythm is most important (more important than the notes)...that without a rhythm that flows from start to finish it is not music. After they can clap the rhythm, I tell them that they've got half the piece already mastered.
Last edited by Ann in Kentucky; 04/19/12 08:38 AM.
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I have tried both and I find it's much harder to add the swing after learning it straight. It totally changes how the piece sounds and so that can really mess with a student's progress on the piece. Once in a while I get the student that can't swing, in which case I will actually have them learn it straight and then take the time to swing it later. For some reason this helps them.
I do wonder if it would be helpful to see a swing piece that doesn't try to articulate the rhythms accurately as you see sometimes (dotted 8th-16th or quarter-8th triplet) but spaces the notes out accordingly. So you'd still have only 8th notes, but the shorter one would be farther form the longer one and closer to the next beat spatially in the measure.
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Swing isn't a modification of straight, it's a fundamentally different rhythm.
Which begs the question: When teaching any rhythm, would it help to start by teaching a completely different rhythm first?
I think most would answer No.
"If we continually try to force a child to do what he is afraid to do, he will become more timid, and will use his brains and energy, not to explore the unknown, but to find ways to avoid the pressures we put on him." (John Holt) www.pianoped.comwww.youtube.com/user/UIPianoPed
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Rhythm first!
With a non-swing piece, the rhythm is typically already a known commodity, i.e. non-swing "straight" or normal rhythm. Thus with a new non-swing piece we simply add notes to a rhythm structure that has already been learned and practiced from (hopefully) the onset of lessons.
With a swing rhythm piece it is most often the the rhythm that is not known. The notes may also be "not known", but they are not different from notes in other straight rhythms pieces; Middle C is always middle C, regardless of the rhythm of the piece. Thus the swing rhythm is the big unknown, and should be taught before or during the plugging in of the notes.
Two more thoughts: Such rhythms can be completely foreign to Classical music students, and Rhythm itself is often the hardest thing to learn, especially swing, syncopated, and other rhythms.
Also, I find with swing rhythms that demonstrating them, via listening to a cd, or playing it, is almost always the fastest and most easily learned method. A lot of pop and such pieces have rhythms that do not translate easily, clearly, or perfectly to notation, unlike most classical which does.
Last edited by rocket88; 04/19/12 09:55 AM. Reason: clarity
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I find it usually helps to use a piece/song that they already know really well,(but can't yet play) to demonstrate swing.
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I usually play the piece first for them, and then let them hear a recording (usually works great with Christopher Norton's Connections series), and then commence straight to sight-playing... 9 kids out of 10 will play with the correct rhythm almost immediately, and then if there are any trouble spots, we mark the 'long' 8th notes in highlighter (or whatever's handy at the time!), and work on that section until it's good. For fun, I took the MIDI recordings off the Connections website, and put them onto a CD, and then have the kids either play the whole piece or just the section they have learnt with the CD... they love it, and it really seems to lock the timing into place!
I don't like to separate swing rhythm from the notes themselves, as I find it takes away from the 'ultimate goal' of the piece. Also, I have found that if you teach kids one thing (i.e. swing rhythm), and then get them to try straight rhythm (or vice versa), some kids then think that it is ok not to use the swing rhythm, because you as a teacher told them not to use it this 'one time' (or however many times it takes for them to get it right!), and chances are, that 'one time' will stick with them far more than what you've been drilling into them the rest of the time!
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Thanks all for your replies. What prompted the question is a student who came yesterday, and despite a lot of rhythm work last week, had somehow managed to reverse the swing pattern completely! I was using Dennis Alexander's series Especially in Jazzy Style.
"Those who dare to teach must never cease to learn." -- Richard Henry Dann Full-time Private Piano Teacher offering Piano Lessons in Olympia, WA. www.mypianoteacher.com Certified by the American College of Musicians; member NGPT, MTNA, WSMTA, OMTA
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John, it's an interesting question you have posed. Are we talking about a piece in which the swing is not notated, except for maybe a little instruction at the top of the piece inviting the performer to swing? I.e., the notation itself is a classical one and the player is supposed to alter it? In that case, I often try to teach both rhythms, because it's fun to be able to do either at will. If it's already a swing notation, however - i.e., with dotted notes - most of my students would be working so hard to honor this trickier notation that they might have trouble playing it evenly ("straight" or "classical").
The concept of swing I find is generally easy for students over the age of maybe 11 to get, and to do.
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Are we talking about a piece in which the swing is not notated, except for maybe a little instruction at the top of the piece inviting the performer to swing? I.e., the notation itself is a classical one and the player is supposed to alter it? The instruction at the top explaining the swing time in a swing piece that is Classically notated is not an optional choice given to the player to swing it...it is instruction as to how the piece should be played, just as direct an instruction as anything else written, such as the time signature, dynamics, etc.
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John, it's an interesting question you have posed. Are we talking about a piece in which the swing is not notated, except for maybe a little instruction at the top of the piece inviting the performer to swing? I.e., the notation itself is a classical one and the player is supposed to alter it? In that case, I often try to teach both rhythms, because it's fun to be able to do either at will. If it's already a swing notation, however - i.e., with dotted notes - most of my students would be working so hard to honor this trickier notation that they might have trouble playing it evenly ("straight" or "classical").
The concept of swing I find is generally easy for students over the age of maybe 11 to get, and to do. Yes, I find that most publishers these days take that notational short-cut. Thanks for the ideas and I suspect that your age observation is pretty close to the mark.
"Those who dare to teach must never cease to learn." -- Richard Henry Dann Full-time Private Piano Teacher offering Piano Lessons in Olympia, WA. www.mypianoteacher.com Certified by the American College of Musicians; member NGPT, MTNA, WSMTA, OMTA
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It's not necessarily used as a short-cut, John!
I have written dozens of swing numbers, and in each case my decision on the mode of notation has been based solely on what feels right. It just happens that one style of notation can communicate the feel of a particular piece far better than another, just in the same way that 3/8 can make more sense than 3/4 in certain situations.
There are four basic choices for scoring swing:
Compound time, simple time with triplets, simple time with straight 1/8ths and instruction to swing, and dotted 1/8ths with instruction to swing.
Each has its own merit, and sometimes it simply comes down to aesthetics, but never just convenience.
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There are four basic choices for scoring swing:
Compound time, simple time with triplets, simple time with straight 1/8ths and instruction to swing, and dotted 1/8ths with instruction to swing.
Each has its own merit, and sometimes it simply comes down to aesthetics, but never just convenience. I don't think triplets or compound time are ever a good representation of swing. Maybe of that "rolling" gospel/rhythm 'n blues style. Swing pieces frequently include pairs of straight 8ths. Therefore, unless you're going to litter the score with "Swing" and "Straight" instructions, there seems little practical alternative to the dotted-8th, 16th notation. In the real world you'll find straight-8 notation with a "Swing" direction (or just an implied one), or dots. Only educators think triplets are "easier"!
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It doesn't matter what the composer wanted. All that matters is how the player swings on a particular day.
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It doesn't matter what the composer wanted. All that matters is how the player swings on a particular day. I think this is getting closer to the truth. Not trying to stir the pot, but I don't believe there is any way to "properly" notate swing. The jazz masters don't try to do it... so I'd say it can't be done. Also, it's definitely NOT correct to play it as dotted eighth - sixteenth. Triplets are closer. But the subtleties of swing vary with tempo and style and just don't fit within the methods of traditional notation. Teaching swing is something that is largely misunderstood. Hopefully, someday a good approach will get nailed down and spread around, but in the meantime... I guess we'll just do the best we can.
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