Where Swing Lives
Swinging thirds
Play along. The recording stays in concert B-flat; the notation follows your instrument.
The music, the voice and the scrolling score slow down together; the pitch stays the same.
Drag A and B (they snap to the bar lines), then press “Loop this section”.
Four bars to a line. It follows the instrument you choose above.
This is the plainest picture in the whole set of thirds becoming a melody. It opens with the exercise itself: C to E and back, D to F and back, then E to G, the thirds walking up the scale one step at a time. Nothing is hidden. What changes is the harmony underneath. In bar 5, over the F chord, the same shape bends to C, E-flat, G, and the third turns blue. In bar 8, C-sharp to E leans into the D minor chord that follows, and in bar 9 the thirds land on it: D to F, then C, E, G. The fingers are doing what they do in the diatonic thirds exercise. The ear is choosing which thirds belong to the chord of the moment. More than half of this chorus is thirds, it stays within about an octave, and it lasts twelve bars, so almost anyone can sing it and then play it.