[the_cat_kittles]

yes. for those confused- where you put things relative to the metronomic beat (center of the beat) matters hugely. depending on styles and settings, bass will be slightly ahead, drums behind, guitar right on top etc. its cruical to hear everyone else in the band the way they hear themselves, relative to the beat. otherwise people think they are being rushed or dragged and it just doesnt congeal. and the feeling when it congeals is like being weightless, its truly great. it may sound trivial to the uninitiated, but its maybe the most important thing for bands, at least in my experience

[beat]

Some of my best music lessons were around rhythm. Early on as a musician, I spent time playing reggae, with a bassist who wanted a guitarist, and was willing to put up with my innocence. He taught me a beat isn't an exact point in time, but rather sort of a region of probability, where sound is more or less likely to occur. Notes can begin or end at any point in a beat. The difference between reggae and ska is largely that in reggae, guitars and snare drum happen late in the beat, and in ska, it happens early. The former sounds languid, the latter frenetic. Same chords, same tempo, same "beat".

The other great lesson came from the jazz/rock drummer, Steve Smith. He describes "swing" as the simplest possible polyrhythm - a diminishment of three against two. Once you have three against two, you can start stripping out duplicates, until your down to ding ding da-ding ding da-ding ding... sound familiar? You get a strong backbeat (2 and 4), and an anticipation note at the very end of a bar before starting the next. Now, that anticipation note can be shifted earlier or later within its own beat, making things tighter or looser.

That's swing.

[the_cat_kittles]

well there is one rub with swing which is that at faster tempos i think alot of people imply it less with note length and more with strong-weak dynamic, since its kind of hard when you are at 280+ to really keep the triplet legit. for drums i guess think of the "mueller stroke". angelo debarre is a counter example i guess, he still uses triplet like eight notes at crazy tempos, but for the most part i think people dont do that.