Here’s a few frequently asked questions about the app, and swing in general. If you have any more, please feel free to drop us an email!
Can you swing to a metronome?
Whereas before you’d need to do one of a number of metronome ‘games’ or use a DAW, you can now use the Swing Click metronome to dial in any swing percentage you like, with any amount of differently swung subdivisions, at any speed. It’s the absolute best way to really hone in on practising swing and microtiming.
Download the free Swing Click metronome app
How to make a metronome swing?
You can make the metronome swing by changing the position of the offbeat on the Swing Click metronome app. The totally free positioning means you can try whatever swing percentage – or combination of swings – you like.
Download the free Swing Click metronome app
How do you develop swing tempo?
The best way to develop swing is by using the Swing Click app. Start at slow tempos and try to really match different swing feels. By using the exercises right here on the website you can build up a great sense of micro timing and start speeding it up as you get comfortable.
Download the free Swing Click metronome app
How do you make a swing rhythm?
The classic ‘swing’ rhythm is based in triplets – using the first and last of a group. However, in reality it sounds best when it’s not exactly even triplets. It’s a good way to initially learn the rough sense of the timing, but as soon as that’s familiar it’s a good idea to spend some time getting to grips with some proper swing feels, that is, slightly off the grid.
Swing Click metronome allows you to do this at any speed you like, at any swing point you like. For example, the last of a set of evenly spaced triplets would be at 67% – you could try playing the swing pattern with this note instead at 70% or 64%, and see if you can tell the difference.
Download the free Swing Click metronome app
What tempo is swing rhythm?
Swing rhythms can be at any tempo! However, as you get into higher speeds there’s less time between the beats, and the limit of our hearing perception means it gets harder to hear and play the same small variations you can hear at slower speeds. Think of it like zooming in and out on a picture – at slower speeds you’re really ‘zoomed in’ and can see (hear) a lot of detail. As you zoom out, you see less of that detail. It doesn’t mean one is better than the other, just that as the speed goes up, the ‘resolution’ goes down, and so maybe you can only hear & play the difference between swing percentages of 10 or 20, as opposed to 2 or 3. The effect most people hear is that at faster speeds the swing ‘evens out’.
Download the free Swing Click metronome app
Is swing rhythm syncopated?
It doesn’t have to be, but syncopation – that is, featuring more offbeats than downbeats – is really how you highlight a swing feel.
If we see a swing pattern like the main screen of the Swing Click app, the downbeat always stays fixed at the top, and the offbeat is placed somewhere else on the circle. You could play downbeats all day long and no-one would know about the swing feel underneath. As soon as you introduce just one of those offbeats, you ‘reveal’ the feel you’re intending to play.
Some songs use this minimalist approach to imply e.g. a ‘bouncy’ feel to the music, without having to play anything overly complex or syncopated. Other times you might have for example the drums playing very straight downbeats, and another instrument playing a syncopated rhythm over the top, highlighting the swung offbeats. As with a lot of music, there’s a vast number of ways to play around with this!