Playing With Time - Electro Swing Music Theory

From a music theory perspective, electronic dance music as a whole tends to be rather dull. It’s unfortunately true that the various subcategories of the EDM genre – house, drum ’n’ bass, and techno spring to mind as the worst offenders – are often the most rigid in terms of their rules and boundaries. I’ve literally had conversations with fans of certain styles before, who have argued vehemently that a particular song cannot be considered a part of this or that genre – because the tempo is wrong, or because the artist hasn’t used a specific synthesiser. To my mind this is ridiculous. One of the reasons I love jazz so much, is for the genre’s enthusiasm for breaking the rules, and for stepping outside and away from what might be expected. And electro swing – at least, what I would consider the best electro swing – should follow this example.

Now another genre that I’m a huge fan of – although I haven't really spoken too much about it online – is prog rock, through bands such as Rush, Dream Theater, and Porcupine Tree. In comparison to much of EDM, this genre is absolutely fascinating from a theory perspective, and one of the levels of enjoyment I find in actively listening to this music comes from actually figuring out just what’s going on. Comparatively, were I to select any one of the millions of, say, house tracks at random – I’d know before even sticking it on that the time signature will be 4/4, and the tempo will be roughly 120 BPM.

In this post, I’m going to explore some of the electro swing tracks that break away from these supposed genre conventions, and do things – even just slightly – more interestingly in terms of timings. The first few examples I’ll give concern tempo, and how a song may switch things up from simply keeping a steady beat throughout the whole thing.

First off is the Electric Swing Circus’s cover of ‘Everybody Wants To Be A Cat’. The technique used here is hardly advanced at all, simply starting off quite slow before kicking up the pace after the extended intro, but it’s incredibly effective and shows that not much is needed to be done in order to add an additional layer of interest.

Sticking with tempo, a similar tactic is used is Slamboree’s ‘Zorba the Remix’. Taking their cues from the original Sirtaki dance, this track gradually increases the tempo, building the excitement up and up until the eventual drop.

Smokey Joe and the Kid use the same method in their remix of C2C’s ‘Happy’, although this time towards the end of the track.

Moving on from tempo, it’s also interesting to look at examples of artists using unusual time signatures. Now in this instance, “unusual” essentially means anything that isn’t 4/4, as that seems to be the accepted norm across the entire EDM spectrum. So whilst a song in 3/4 may not seem that unusual for fans of certain genres, within EDM it certainly is. The first electro swing example of this I could find was Caravan Palace’s ‘Violente Valse’.

Another example comes with Alice Francis’s ‘Beautiful Pain’.

And two examples (although, confusingly, using the same vocal sample for the intro) have been produced by Skeewiff. ‘Space Ghetto Waltz’…

…and ‘Morgenblätter’.

3/4 provides a rather refreshing variant to the standard 4/4 found across most of the genre, and a producer may wish to spice this up even further by switching to compound, or even complex time signatures. However, this largely appears to be the limit for current electro swing, although there are two examples I’m aware of which are really pushing up against these boundaries.

The first is Dutty Moonshine’s ‘Take A Little Time’, a variation on Dave Brubeck’s ‘Take Five’. This track was seemingly produced for this very reason: to showcase to others just how much could indeed be done with this genre. The piece begins with a 4/4 variation on Brubeck’s theme, before switching to 6/8, and then reverting back to the standard 5/4 rhythm. As the piece continues, it switches back to 4/4, and we then find a gradual tempo increase similar to the ones previously discussed. In this one piece, Dutty Moonshine have employed all the tactics described thus far, and more.

This song would undoubtedly be the best example of how to play around with timings in this genre, were it not for the final piece I’ll discuss, to which it comes a close second: Chinese Man’s ‘Step Back’. Like the Dutty Moonshine example, this piece plays around with variations in both tempo and time signature, but it does something exceptional, which I’m not sure I’ve seen anywhere else. The piece begins in 6/8, at a speed of 210 BPM. However, halfway through it switches both time signature and tempo simultaneously, to 4/4 and 140 BPM respectively. Towards the end, this switches back again to 6/8 and 210. What this means, is that if one focuses on the strong beat – i.e. every three beats when in 6/8 and every 2 when in 4/4 – there is actually no tempo change at all, and the underlying rhythm remains at a steady 70 BPM throughout. This is not only an incredibly clever technique for electro swing, it’s impressively advanced composition in general, regardless of genre.

I hope that more electro swing artists latch onto these sorts of ideas, and challenge themselves with what they can do and produce when breaking away from the mould that needn’t exist for this genre. There’s certainly a lot more room for further explorations with regard to timings. One possibility could be the use of irrational time signatures, which so far have yet to be used within popular music at all, as far as I’m aware. I’m genuinely fascinated by music theory, and now that we have so much time on our hands, I may consider turning this into something of a series, if it’s something people would be interested in. Please do get in touch if anyone has any specific areas of music theory they’d like me to discuss in relation to electro swing. Like with the Chinese Man example, there’s some great instances of fantastic composition going on throughout this genre, and I’d love to explore and share them as much as I can.

Review: Devils, Dames N Debauchery - Duke Skellington

Devils, Dames N Debauchery is the newest release to come out of Ragtime Records, showcasing the latest music from the hottest producer in American electro swing: Duke Skellington. Having joined Ragtime Records back in 2017, he has become an absolutely essential part of the team, regularly putting out top quality tunes, and demonstrating himself to be right up there with the rest of his labelmates. This most recent EP has been out for almost a week now, and has been certainly been making something of a stir.

The EP opens with ‘Name in Lights’, which with its percussive intro played on brushes, starts off as quite a laidback number. One of the interesting things to notice with this track – a theme that will continue throughout the EP – is that there’s just as much focus on the musicality side of things as on the beat, particularly singer Kumiho’s vocals, which is a very welcome change from much electro swing. As the track builds, we arrive at an incredibly glitchy drop, which also helps to set the tone for the EP, which includes a fantastic saxophone line over the top of things as it develops. The next track is ‘Hot Jazz’, the first official remix on the release, which like ‘Name in Lights’ features a similar emphasis on sultry, female vocals. Starting off with a strong house beat, this track goes on to present some very low, dark basslines that will sound incredible over a massive soundsystem. But we still find this focus on musicality – in fact, halfway through the beat cuts out entirely, highlighting this even further.

‘My Mind’ follows, featuring our third powerful female voice – this time Alanna Lyes, who’s popping up everywhere at the moment, and deservedly so. ‘My Mind’ also opens with a strong house beat, underneath some gypsy guitar, and scratching – showcasing a wide variety of sounds that all work considerably well together. There’s another huge glitchy drop in this one, and the variety in sound continues, through its wobbles interspersed with slap bass. I also really enjoy the skilful reed samples towards the end. The second official remix come after this, with the return of Kumiho: ‘Spooky’. The track starts off very minimally, and isn’t the most stimulating, although the piano that comes in does manage to sound very fresh – despite being a regular feature throughout this genre. The saxophone that emerges could be mixed slightly better, and sits a little uncomfortably on top of the rest of the mix, but overall this is still an enjoyable dance number.

Towards the end of the release, ‘Dames’ presents a very uptempo, danceable track, which starts off slightly uneventfully, but builds and builds and builds. As it develops, more and more excitement and interest creep in at every turn, including a kind of electronic walking bass during the first drop. It’s actually surprising just how much happens in this track if one listens closely enough. And finally, ‘Hit That’ presents another song featuring a bassline which will be incredibly powerful when played over a large soundsystem. We begin relatively lowkey, with a Spanish-sounding guitar that develops into some nice gypsy jazz lines, and as the song progresses, we hear what’s possibly the biggest and most anticipative build-up I’ve ever heard in an electro swing track. Again, this track also manages to keep a high focus on the musicality – not so much vocally in this half of the EP – but in this song for example, we have all sorts of interweaving instrumental samples.

Duke Skellington has made a real achievement here, through a release which features brilliant elements of both musicality and danceability. So often when creating electronic music, a producer has to sacrifice either the beat and excitement of a track, or make it musically quite dull. In this situation, Duke Skellington has demonstrated excellently that one needn’t forfeit either aspect of the music in order to satisfy the other. Across the release, almost every song showcases just how well this can be done, and I’m very glad that there’s a producer in electro swing who can do it just as well as he can. There’s clearly been a lot of effort put into this EP, and the resultant quality shows this. I’ve been wondering for some time now when the American producers of electro swing will catch up with the European ones, and with releases such as this one, it is undeniable that this time has now come.