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Abstract

To which extent and how do jazz musicians synchronize their timing to create swing? Swing
is a salient feature of jazz music, yet its main psychoacoustical and musical components have
remained elusive—save the obvious long-short subdivision of quarter notes. In particular, the
possible role of microtiming deviations for swing has been a subject of long-standing controversy.
Adopting an operational definition of swing we present a study which ultimately
demonstrates a positive effect of certain microtiming deviations on swing. We manipulate the
timing of original piano recordings to carry out an experiment with professional and semiprofessional
jazz musicians measuring the swing of different timing conditions. Thereby we
prove that slightly delayed downbeats and synchronized offbeats of a soloist with respect to a
rhythm section enhance swing. Analyzing a set of 456 jazz improvisations we find that many
jazz musicians do use minute downbeat delays. These results show that systematic microtiming
deviations in the form of downbeat delays are a key component of swing in jazz.