Fellows of the clawhammer banjo forum
I have a complete - if a little rough around the edges - demo of the Swinging the Eights concept I got to into earlier.
The entire discussion can be found in a thread where someone was confused about the ASPO. The thread is titled
Pull Off From 0
As usual I prolly carried things a mite too far, but that is my nature, and I'm working on an article for RSB II. Besides I have a demo that backs it up in an attachment to an email - no virus etc here. My email is clean. SFAIK.
If you want to hear the tab (or even see it) you will need to go to
and download the Free TEFView software for your platform
Once you pull the tab up in TEFView you can listen to the rhythm through the built in Midi player (about the fifth heading at the top of the page.
Most Folk music is usually written as having all even steven eighth notes, but the reality is that all the really hot players swing their eights more often than you would think..
Some people describe the two eighths as an implied triplet with only the 1st and 3rd note played. Unfortunately this is something I cannot seem to make tabledit do, and besides the "thirds" feeling has more to do with Blues than OT.
I've run into a problem with Gmail. It apparently will not retain attachments as one forwards with it, so while I work on solving the glitch. I'm going to use my old yahoo account for the moment. I know it forwards messages complete with attachments.
So if you want to try the tabledit demo of swinging the eighths, send an email with the subject "Eighths" to:
oldwoodchuckb@yahoo.com
I don't know how to make email addresses go Live. Anyone out there who can help me on that?
At any rate I'll get it out to you in less than 24 hours
Here again is the text of the essay:
Swinging The Eighths
I always recommend that people start out doing things in a formal manner, where the rhythm is clearly delineated. By fretting with the ASPO finger on the first half of the beat it is absolutely ready to do the pull-off (and I DO mean pull-off not pluck) exactly on the back half of the beat.
I feel that plucking is not something to try until you have the pull-off working properly and fully understand how rhythm really works. Sloppy rhythm is always going to kill the buzz of playing. It is hard to reach Nirvana or even Irvine when the rhythm is sloppy.
One of the things I see from people who start out just swinging the finger to do a "Pluck" is the note landing almost anywhere in the beat. It wouldn't be bad if the finger always landed a bit ahead of the beat or a bit behind it, but all too often it will land ahead the first time and behind the second, right on the beat the third time and almost overlapping the next beat the fourth time. Or hit on any other combination of places within the quarter note that makes up a full beat.
Think of it this way - The frail note takes up the full quarter note value on every beat. It is written as an eighth note in frailing mostly to make the reading easier. The ASPO is written as a eighth note starting after half of the quarter note is played. In frailing the eighth note is frequently the smallest note value written, but the written score is only a rough skeleton of the actual tune, and within those two eighth note that make up the quarter note, you have an almost infinite number of moments when you can make the actual second stroke and still be within the official rhythm. So you have a lot of room, but if you don't make your rhythm consistent it begins to sound off - ragged - sloppy - wobbly - there are a lot of ways to describe it, almost all of them negative to one extent or another.
I've not written much about this but if you have the Big Tabonanza and TEFView you will find a perfect example in a tab titled Crow Creek Syncopation. However, I charge for the Tabonanza. It is not free. I need some income from the book to maintain the website etc. If there is not a tab that shows anticipating the beat in RSB I'll try to make one that I can email out free.
This hard to read tab can be played by your computer, and it gives a prime example of anticipation (playing ahead of the beat). OT music tends to sound best with anticipation while blues is best played with a bit of drag. I won't get into that here.
For the Crow Creek demo I divided each beat into 8 divisions which would be thirtysecond-ths (1/32nd) per division. I once experimented with going down to 64ths, but I couldn't hear the difference between them and straight eighths. So here is a text version of the beats, starting with straight eighths.
F = Frail P = the Pull-off (or actually a drop thumb or a hammer etc) and the symbol ^ will stand for the divisions that are not played. | is the measure bars, so you can see how the beats work. Each time you Frail you are doing the beginning of the beat. Thus F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ is equal to one beat
First: Straight Eighths F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ | F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ ^ |
try counting to eight for each beat and say to yourself: Frail huh huh huh Pull huh huh huh | Frail huh huh huh Pull huh huh huh |
After you've been over that a few times and are comfy with it, try to anticipate the back half of the beat by 1/32nd of a note: Frail huh huh Pull huh huh huh huh|
Anticipated: Frail huh huh Pull huh huh huh huh| Frail huh huh Pull huh huh huh huh| Frail huh huh Pull huh huh huh huh| Frail huh huh Pull huh huh huh huh| Frail huh huh Pull huh huh huh huh|
The Crow Creek Demo mostly only swings the first set of eighths in a pair, and because of limitations to tabledit the end result comes out quite staccato. Let the second note ring for its full eighth plus a thirtysecondth value.
Frail huh huh huh Pull huh huh | Frail huh huh huh Pull huh huh huh | Frail huh huh huh Pull huh huh huh | Frail huh huh huh Pull huh huh huh | Frail huh huh huh Pull huh huh huh |
In Crow Creek the inner notes are mostly drop thumbs instead of pulls.
Try it. It's fun!
Then there is the Blues Drag: F ^ ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ F ^ ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^| F ^ ^ ^ ^ P ^ ^ |
Which you count: Frail huh huh huh huh Pull huh huh | Frail huh huh huh huh Pull huh huh | Frail huh huh huh huh Pull huh huh |
I'll bet that one is a lot harder to do smoothly. Don't panic over it. Dragging doesn't come up often in Old Time Music. Dancers are thrilled with anticipated half beats, but really hate it when their feet must hit the floor before the note.
In music a small shift like this is usually referred to as "swinging the eighths" and it has been going on at least since the dawn of the swing era (circa 1930) although it was used earlier. This is not the syncopation you would use in a Hornpipe, Strathspey or a Rag. Somewhere on the web you will find a recording of Jelly Roll Morton explaining how the Formal Ragtime pieces that Scott Joplin wrote in rigid hornpipe syncopation morphed into the Jazz Rags that Morton's band played. It is worth listening to several times. Morton swung the syncopated sixteenths and triplets creating swing on top of syncopation. Morton's Band, King Oliver's, Louis Armstrong's Hot Five and Hot Seven, and many others introduced the swing sound to white American audiences.
I've listened to a lot of old records in my time and can tell you that music made by white Americans before Swing came in, and whether it be Sousa Marches or Pop bands or Female Vocalists it all sounds so formal and straight to modern ears that we tend to laugh at it. I have to admit that I still find those early recordings funny after 60 years of listening.
My recordings were all from large companies and were strictly Pop - I never found any Old Time or Blues - I Never even found a Carter Family recording. All my records came to me from the attics and basements of people who were happy to see all those old records carried off. They were mostly classical (people who can swing but only if you make it clear that they must) with a lot of Jazz, Some South American Swing like Xavier Cugot, and a couple Burl Ives records
The few New Orleans Jazz 78s I found had swing, but the players were mostly black. I am convinced that most white Americans learned about swing from black jazz bands. In some areas they might have learned from other ethnic bands (like Irish who really swing their eights now - but I don't know about 1920 - maybe they learned from New Orleans Jazz too.
