Hey there,
I’m writing a lot of music for jazz ensembles and big band and alway struggle with the playback of the music in swing feel.
When writing for bigband/jazz ensembles, it is custom that quarter notes are always played short (almost halved/staccato) where as eighth and sixteenth notes are always played legato (slurred).
For example: in the classic realbooks there are almost no staccato marks or slurs to be found, yet, these are always played. The goes for many big band sheets (Basie, Ellington etc). This avoids clutter on the page.
Is there a way to automate this playback?
(to slur 8th, 16th and 32th notes and shorten quarter notes)
Thanks,
Jochem
This is in theory possible, but tricky. Obviously you can make edits in Play mode but that’s a hassle. You can create Expression Maps that are only for that particular project that use a Note Length condition, and then set a Length % just for that particular note length. It’s been a while since I’ve done this, but I seem to recall the note length is dependent on tempo. (I might be misremembering that.) Anyway, I did get this to work before once I narrowed down what the quarter note “note length” was at that tempo. As this is commonly found, and is the house style for all of the Jazz at Lincoln Center Essentially Ellington transcriptions, it would be nice if this could be more easily achievable.