About this post

In this post, I provide exercises intended to help you play blues and jazz music with a classic swing feel and understand how to interpret regular eighth notes as swung eighth notes.

Swing Feel and Swung Eighth Notes

Most teachers explain to their students (correctly) that swung eighth notes are based on triplets, which is generally true. However, depending on the genre, style, and tempo of the music, there are many swing feels that are not mathematically perfectly allied with triplets. For the purpose of getting you off the ground with blues and swing music, the exercises provided here will deal with how to interpret eighth notes as triplets first.

How to interpret straight 8th notes as swung 8ths

The first bar in the image below shows how the second 8th note in the left hand is to be aligned musically with the third triplet of every beat in the right hand.
The second bar shows how it would have to be written for someone who does not understand swing notation.
Tip: Watch the video under Exercise 1 below for a demonstration.

Swing Feel – Exercise 1

In the two videos below, you will find a great exercise that will quickly get you started with playing with a swing feel while reading straight 8th notes. 

Swing Feel – Exercise 2

My Role Models for Blues and Swing Piano 

The best way to learn to play with a swing feel is undoubtedly to listen to the masters of blues and swing music.
Below is a list of pianists I recommend listening to if you want to learn how to play blues and swing piano. They played an essential role in my personal swing and blues piano development. There are, of course, many more. 

Below are some blues and swing-type Christmas song arrangements I did for solo piano you might enjoy.