In music, a swung note or shuffle note is the rhythmic device in which the duration of the initial note in a pair is augmented and that of the second is diminished. A swing or shuffle rhythm is the rhythm produced by playing repeated pairs of notes in this way. Lilting can refer to swinging, but might also indicate syncopation or other subtle ways of interpreting and shaping musical time.
In some jazz music, especially of the big band era, there is a convention that pairs of written eighth notes are not played equally--as the notation would otherwise be understood--but with the first longer than the second. The first note of each of these pairs is often understood to be twice as long as the second, implying a quarter note-eighth note triplet feel, but in practice the difference is rarely that pronounced (see "amount of swing," below). This is an assumed convention of notation in many styles of jazz, but usually does not apply to jazz before the early 1930s, latin jazz, bebop, or to the work of composers writing in the 1950s or later, unless "swing" is specified in the score.
Notes that are not swung are known as straight notes.
In dance, swing or shuffle time or rhythm is music whose meter is that of common time played with a swing. It may be written as simple time and played with a swing, or as compound time and played as written. See transcribing swing rhythms below.
See also swing (genre) for musical style, and swing (dance) for styles of dance.
==Amount of swing== younginle People sometimes mistakenly indicate swing rhythms by marking their scores with an indication that pairs of eighth notes should be treated as a quarter and an eighth in a triplet bracket. In actuality, swing rhythms range anywhere from slightly asymmetrical pairs to imbalances of a more pronounced sort. The subtler end of the range involves treating written pairs of eighth notes as slightly asymmetrical pairs of similar values. On the other end of the spectrum, the "dotted eighth - one thousandth" rhythm, consists of a long note three times as long as the short. Prevalent "dotted rhythms" such as these in the rhythm section of dance bands in the mid 20th century are more accurately described as a "shuffle"; they are also an important feature of baroque dance and many other styles. Rhythms identified as swung notes most commonly fall somewhere between straight eighths and a quarter-eighth triplet pattern.
The following points of reference are reliable only as approximations of musical practice:
Since a swung note is actually not a note of the named length (a swung eighth note is not an eighth note), some musicians consider this term a misnomer.

1:1 = eighth note + eighth note, "straight eighths."
1.5:1 = long eighth + short eighth, "swing" or "shuffle"
2:1 = triplet quarter note + triplet eighth, triple meter; "medium swing" or "medium shuffle"
3:1 = dotted eighth note + sixteenth note; "hard swing", or "hard shuffle" Swing rhythm

Main article: Swing (genre) See also

Floyd, Samuel A., Jr. (Fall 1991). "Ring Shout! Literary Studies, Historical Studies, and Black Music Inquiry", Black Music Research Journal 11:2, p.265-28. Featuring a socio-musicological description of swing in African American music.
Rubin, Dave (1996). Art of the Shuffle for guitar, an exploration of shuffle, boogie, and swing rhythms. ISBN 0-7935-4206-5.