Swing and triplets

I use the new swing playback feature in Symphony Pro for lots of jazz and blues scores. Most of my scores include quarter-note beats consisting of notated triplets which sound very uneven in swing playback. With medium or strong quaver swing setting, I could enter two semiquavers and a quaver to get a fairly even triplet playback, but that doesn't make sense to the performer.

I'm wondering if it would be possible for Symphony Pro to automatically switch between swing and straight time playback depending on the notation? For example, with quaver swing setting, the software would divide each voice in the score into quarter-note "voice beats". If a voice beat consists of the notes/rests:

two quavers: use swing time
quaver then two semiquavers: use swing time
two semiquavers then quaver: use swing time (provides backward compatibility for existing scores which use this workaround to force a triplet)
quaver triplet: use straight time for any voice beat containing a non-binary note/rest position or length (the notation overrides the swing setting)
four semiquavers: use straight time for any voice beat where all note/rest lengths are less than a quaver

Comments

  • You've made a lot of great observations here, and we've received suggestions about similar corrections in swing playback. The rules you proposed make a lot of sense, and we'll use them in a fix for the next update.