How swing works

Swing makes the first eighth note of each beat longer than the second. How much longer is the swing ratio, and it moves with tempo and with the player. Use the demo below to hear the range.

Hear swing

The demo plays eighth notes at 110 BPM. Move the slider while it plays and listen for the point where straight turns into swung.

In straight eighths the two notes in each beat split it evenly, 50:50. In triplet swing the first note takes two thirds of the beat and the second takes one third, roughly 67:33. Drum machines and DAWs show this as a percentage. 50% is straight, about 67% is triplet swing and 75% is a dotted eighth followed by a sixteenth.

How swing changes with tempo

Players rarely sit exactly on any of those numbers. Measurements of jazz drummers' ride cymbal patterns show the ratio widening at slow tempos, sometimes past triplet, and narrowing toward even as the tempo climbs. A ballad can swing hard. At bebop tempos the eighths come close to straight, and the swing comes from accents on the offbeats and how each note is articulated.

The feel came out of blues and early New Orleans jazz and became the sound of the big bands in the 1930s. Where the beat sits, ahead of the pulse or behind it, is a separate question covered in groove and feel.

J Dilla and loose timing

J Dilla programmed many of his beats on an Akai MPC with quantise turned off, so hits landed where his fingers put them instead of snapping to the grid. People often describe the result as drunk. Parts in the same beat can follow different grids, a swung hi-hat over a straighter kick for example, so they rub against each other.

One swing setting can't reproduce that, because the parts don't move together. The light setting in the demo is close to the MPC-style swing many hip-hop producers dial in. Dilla's records go a long way past it. Dan Charnas's book Dilla Time (2022) breaks the approach down in detail.

How specific players swing

Put these on and play along with the demo running quietly underneath. You'll hear how far each one sits from the textbook triplet.

• Big band. Count Basie and Jo Jones: Jo Jones moved the time off the bass drum and onto the hi-hat, and Freddie Green's four-to-the-bar guitar kept it light. Start with "Jumpin' at the Woodside" (1938).
• Bebop. Charlie Parker: Play "Ko-Ko" (1945) next to "Parker's Mood" (1948). At the fast tempo his eighths are nearly even and the swing is in the offbeat accents. On the slow blues the long-short split opens right up.
• Hip-hop. J Dilla: Donuts (2006) is the place to start. The drums sit off the grid on purpose, and no two parts swing by the same amount.
• Funk. Clyde Stubblefield: On James Brown's "Funky Drummer" (1970) the sixteenths have a slight lilt and the snare ghost notes do most of the work. It's one of the most sampled drum breaks ever recorded.
• Blues. Chris Layton: Stevie Ray Vaughan's "Pride and Joy" (1983) is a hard triplet shuffle, with drums, bass and guitar all locked on the long-short pattern.
• Rock. John Bonham: "Fool in the Rain" (1979) is a half-time shuffle, with triplet ghost notes on the snare around a backbeat on beat 3. Compare Bernard Purdie on Steely Dan's "Home at Last" (1977) and Jeff Porcaro on Toto's "Rosanna" (1982).

Swing settings at a glance

• 50%, straight: Even eighths. Most rock, pop, electronic and Latin music.
• 54-58%, light swing: Loosens a straight groove without sounding swung. A common drum machine setting in hip-hop and R&B.
• 60-64%, medium swing: Clearly swung but lighter than triplet. Typical of medium and up-tempo jazz.
• 67%, triplet swing: Long-short on a triplet grid, the same as 12/8. Blues shuffles and medium-tempo jazz.
• 70-75%, hard swing: Close to a dotted eighth and sixteenth. Slow shuffles and ballads.