I recently did a few experiments with The Swinger – a neat little piece of Python code which does a little analysis / time stretching / distortion on any track you feed it, to change the beat and give it a ‘swung’ rhythm. The idea was to use it during a talk I gave at DJam about the nature of swing music – as part of the talk, I played a few well-known tracks that had been fed to The Swinger – partly for comic effect, because the results can be hilarious, and partly to make the point that doing this does not, point of fact, create a swing track. Really.
I think this might have backfired somewhat, as I’ve had a lot of people ask me for one of these tracks. And truth be told, I half love it, if only because it’s so utterly ridiculous.
Just … don’t play it at any Lindy events. I mean it.
A few years ago, I used to play the Swinger-ified version of “Every Breath You Take” next to the original in order to demonstrate to a music class that makes music swing.
Unfortunately, I never downloaded the track, and when it dissapeared off the website, I lost it. I tried to recreate it, but I couldn’t figure it out. You wouldn’t happen to have a copy of that track, would you?.
No – I’ve not tried that one. If I give it a go, I’ll let you know.