If you want a piece to really "swing" should you then play it slower or faster? I think it`s better playing a little bit to slow than to fast, isn`t it?

it depends......it always depends.

I would mess around with timing. In our jazz band, our instructor will make triplets where she thinks it`ll jazz it up. Or u could cut off notes or hold them longer. It depends on the song entirely. In Stand By Me, one of our pieces, it`s better slower, and with not to many accents. Then on Peter Gunn, it`s played quicker and more accented.

swing...it`s really one of the things that defines jazz. Swing can happen in fast or slow, but the key is to make the rhythm fit the mood of the piece. Decide on a piece and get a metronome. First play the piece as it should be played (ie all the `correct rhythms`, then try changing some of the rhythms, holding notes back etc, playing some notes more than once, useing triplets etc etc but making sure that the whole piece fits in the same number of metronome beats. It`s impossible to teach someone how to swing like maths. You must listen to loads of jazz records and get a `feeling`. Someone once did a calculation of the average note length variation in swing and found it came out to something like 1/6 of a crotchet. It`s extremely subtle in some cases, but once you have it, you have jazz!

Peter Gunn is not swing....

To help you get a swing feel, think on the off beats of two and four. For example, if you were doing a piece at quarter note equals 140, and if you were going to work on this at home, you would set your metronome to half note equals 70, and the beats would be on two and four. This helps give you a laid back aproach to swing.

Here I will get really precise. Quarter notes in swing are divided into three triplets. When playing 8th notes if they are on the beat they get two triplets and whn they are off beats they get one tiplet. Doted quarter notes that are on the best get 5 and those that are off beats get 4, so on and so forth.