Swinging eighth notes are very common in music. They give songs a rolling sensation often called the 'flat tire rhythm'.
Here is a bar of triplets. I've split the bar into four coloured blocks so you can clearly see each beat.
Triplets look like eighth notes but are grouped in threes with the number 3 above or below them. This indicates that each beat has been split into 3 equal notes.
At slow to medium tempos, straight eighth notes can sound a bit too rigid and boring. So you'll often find at these tempos eighth notes will be swung.
In a nutshell, what is done is the first eighth note is longer, making the second one shorter.
The theory behind it is that we:
Take a beat,
Split the beat into 3 equal notes,
Join notes one and two together. Leaving an uneven rhythm of two notes, one 2/3rds and one 1/3rds of the beat.
We're now back to two notes per beat like eighth notes, except the first note is two-thirds of the beat long and the second one-third of a beat. So we get: Long note, Short note, Long note, Short note, repeated over and over.
How to play the swing rhythm.
The correct way to count triplets is
1-Trip-Let 2-Trip-Let 3-Trip-Let 4-Trip-Let
This gives you the 3 notes per beat while also keeping track of each beat by still saying the number of each beat.
For this exercise it might be easier to count 1-2-3 1-2-3 over and over. Then when playing strum down on the 1 (hold the hand down on 2) and then strum up on the 3. Giving you a long down strum and a shorter up strum. Down = 2/3 of the beat the up 1/3. So the down strum is twice the length of the up strum.
Below are two grid showing you each beat being split into 2/3 and 1/3.
This shows two sets of notes on top we see three triples per beat with the first two tied.
The second line shows you the correct way to write it, a Quarter note, then an Eight note, with the bracket with the 3 under neat showing you the beat has been split in 3.
Remember a quarter note is the same length as two eighth notes.
Here is a bar just of the Quarter Note, Eight Note Triplets
Lastly here is the tab for the riff shown in the video. Notice the notes are 8th notes with the bracket at the start showing (Two 8th notes = Quarter Note Eight Note Triplets)
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