Swing Playback in 6/8 Time Won't Work

[SarahOhlson]

Hi all!

I am arranging a song with 6/8 time for a cappella voices. I understand that Finale swings the next smallest notes interval, so in 6/8 16ths should be swung in Human Playback.

I can't, for the life of me, get the swing function to work. I've tried human playback, I've tried adding an "Swing" expression at the beginning of the piece and not using human playback, I've tried setting it manually with tempo, etc.

Still, each time I play back my arrangement, the 16ths are straight. Can you help me? Thank you!!

[Michael Good]

This sounds like a Finale question that should be asked at one of our Finale forums at http://forum.makemusic.com/.

[Mogens Lundholm]

And I thought that swing was merely a question of lazy people having music in 12/8, but
still writing 4/4 in the score - because they considered it easier.

Some documents on the internet says that Finale can apply swing to 2/4, 3/3 and 4/4.
But why using "Swing" - better do it right, because the Swing definition will always
be ambigiuos. Use 12/8 or write the triols.

I cannot find anything about swing concerning MusicXML. Should a MusicXML-player be able
to play a note sheet written in 4/4 as swing anyway?
(Using the MusicXML command <credit-words ...> and searching for "Swing" or "shuffle" seem to be as a bad idea)

/Mogens

[Michael Good]

Hi Mogens,

You can specify a swing-style marking as in your attachment with the metronome element. However that just provides appearance, not any details about swing playback. The original MusicXML 1.0 design idea was that this would be specified by changes in the duration element. But that probably isn't the best way to do this. This is something we could look at improving for the future.

[Mogens Lundholm]

Thanks.
/Mogens

[Quiet Bear]

As a jazz musician, I gave up long ago with trying to notate swing. Jazz players are used to seeing straight eighths with the words "swing" written above. Sometimes even dotted eighths and sixteenths.
I usually notate this way, but make another score in HP by actually playing in the notes in swing style, and not paying any attention to what comes out printed on the screen. Of course Quantizing is out of the question.
I use this version only for its sound, (usually in Sonar X2) as a demo of how the music should sound. Especially for school band arrangements.
Perhaps this might give you some ideas as to how to "make it swing" from the printed page.
One look at the HP result will convince you of the shortcomings of our system of musical notation.
The term "work with what you got" comes to mind.
Good Luck
Jack Marek