Describing the Sound of a Pleasing Latin Pronunciation

from wikipedia's "swung note" entry:

Various Rhythmic Swing Approximations:
1:1 = eighth note + eighth note, "straight eighths." play rhythm from introduction with no shuffle, as straight eighths (help·info)
3:2 = long eighth + short eighth, "swing" or "shuffle" play example with light swing (help·info)
2:1 = triplet quarter note + triplet eighth, triple meter; "medium swing" or "medium shuffle" play example (help·info)
3:1 = dotted eighth note + sixteenth note; "hard swing", or "hard shuffle" play example with hard swing (help·info)

-useful term: 'cadence'

-useful term:

n music, notes inégales (French: unequal notes) refers to a performance practice, mainly from the Baroque and Classical music eras, in which some notes with equal written time values are performed with unequal durations, usually as alternating long and short. The practice was especially prevalent in France in the 17th and 18th centuries, with appearances in other European countries at the same time; and it reappeared as the standard performance practice in the 20th century in jazz.

The practice of applying unequal treatment to successive notes with the same notated value may go as far back as the earliest music of the Middle Ages; indeed some scholars believe that some plainchant of the Roman Catholic Church, including Ambrosian hymns, may have been performed as alternating long and short notes. This interpretation is based on a passage in Saint Augustine...

ne of the best sources for understanding the situation of notes inégales in France is the notation of music by composers from other European countries who wrote imitations of it. Music from Italy, Germany and England all borrowed this feature of French music, with the critical difference that the inequality of note values was notated, since performers could not be expected to add the notes inégales themselves.
Application of notes inégales to contemporary performance of music not written in France, for example the music of J.S. Bach, is extremely controversial, and indeed resulted in one of the most heated debates in 20th century musicology. One school of thought attempted to show that the French practice was actually widespread in Europe, and performance of music by composers as diverse as Bach and Scarlatti should be suffused with dotted rhythms; another school of thought held that even-note playing was the norm in their music unless dotted rhythms were explicitly notated in the score. Evidence on both sides of the argument is compelling, for example 17th century English writings recommending unequal playing (Roger North's autobiographical Notes of Me, written around 1695, describes the practice explicitly, in reference to English lute music), as well as François Couperin, who wrote in L'art de toucher le clavecin (1716), that in Italian music, Italians always write the notes exactly the way they want them played. Then again, the practice may have been more widespread in some areas, such as England, than others, such as Italy and Germany.
J.S. Bach famously imitated the style in Contrapunctus II from the Art of Fugue; however in this piece the notes inégales are written out as dotted rhythms.

A similar practice to notes inégales occurs from the 20th century to the present day, in jazz, although the term "swung note" is used by jazz musicians and listeners. Indeed, it is so universally understood that a stream of eighth-notes is to be rendered unequally that the phrase "straight eighths" is used whenever a jazz arranger wants a performer to play eighth-notes evenly. In jazz practice, in addition, it is common for the notes not only to differ in duration but in intensity. Swung eighths written on the beat are generally read as quarter-note triplets, while notes written on off-beats are played as eighth note triplets. Therefore, the underlying rhythmic grid to most jazz music is an eighth note triplet pattern. Most musicians don't do the math involved in playing notes, instead simply feeling an uneven subdivision. Occasionally, sixteenth notes are swung and played fitting into a sixteenth-note triplet grid.
The similarity to the rule of 17th century France is striking, in that jazz is organized in rhythmic layers, with chord changes often at the level of the bar or half-bar, followed by a quarter-note beat, and an eighth-note level in which notes are played freely, and almost always unevenly. Some scholars (2) have speculated a connection by way of the influence of French music in New Orleans on early jazz styles.