Site on song structures?

[nroberts]

You run into song structures and types in music quite a bit. For instance when someone says, "Let's do a 12 bar in G," you are expected to know what that is. I know what a 12 bar is, and a fast 12 bar, but I know there are others...and then there are more that don't follow 12 bar structure...like what is a "Monte"?

Does anyone know of a site that gives definition for these terms? More than just a list of 12 bar forms but maybe others like what a swing is supposed to feel like, etc...

Thanks.

[Stiglar]

Most of the pre defined kinda structures that relate to contemporary playing are based pretty heavily on the blues from what i've found , not sure of a site that could help you , but a few years ago i picked up a little book that was a dictionary of music and terms and forms .. that has helped me a million times over the last few years .. check it out ! having said that i still got no clue what a monte is :P.

as for swing feel and feels like that it's very tough to explain on paper . but basically when you see 2 quavers on a piece of music that's swung you play them as a dotted quaver and a semi quaver .. .. thats a very broken down way of saying it .. i've attached a picture at the bottom , that's usually what it'll have written on a piece of music that is swung .. or the way that i described it .

of course once you get into playing jazz all of it has a swing feel unless otherwise noted ... so you just play that way .. they don't really play straight 8ths hehe .

it's a hard thing because even by reading this stuff on a page (structures and feels etc) you think you understand but it's not till you actually play it with people that you really start to understand it without thinking . the swing feel especially is a very tough thing to master in my opinion there are alot of varying degrees of swing and it's impossible to emulate ... the best thing is to just jam with other people who know about htis stuff and it will just naturally rub off which is how the great players learnt of yesterday and another reason why i think music is freaken awesome ! ahha

sorry hope i didn't go on a rant here .. i attached the picture of the swign feel and an mp3 of me playing firstly straight 8ths and then swing 8ths so you can compare the 2 .

enjoy

[nroberts]

Originally Posted by Stiglar

as for swing feel and feels like that it's very tough to explain on paper . but basically when you see 2 quavers on a piece of music that's swung you play them as a dotted quaver and a semi quaver .. .. thats a very broken down way of saying it .. i've attached a picture at the bottom , that's usually what it'll have written on a piece of music that is swung .. or the way that i described it .

Well, swing was just an example and I was talking more of the style...sorry...I think you helped some others though I am sure. I know about the chung ka chung ka chung thing...

I have heard things like swing emphasizes 2 & 4, etc...not sure if that is right, but that is the idea of hat I am asking. Then you got others like Mamba, latin, beebop, etc... It would be nice to know what those sound like so when somebody says, "Lets to a mamba" I might know wtf they are talking about.

The next jam I will host will have a "Monte" as the backing so we can maybe study it and decide what that is. It has a 3/4 feel to it, maybe 12/8...

[Stiglar]

ah right i get you ,

i spose some of what i said can be applied to all of them , pretty hard to write it down on paper .. .best thing to do is just listen to actual mambos and bossa's or different styles .. you'll find each one has it's cliches that can only really be learnt by listening .

good luck