This is a tempo sensitive issue. A lot of people learned to think of swing eighth notes like triplet eighth notes where you tie the first two together and the upbeat is the third triplet eighth. This only works at slow tempos like 12/8 feel blues. In this example the downbeat is twice as long as the upbeat. However, the faster the tempo the more ricky-ticky polka it sounds. The faster the tempo in reality, the closer all notes should become in length. The accents make it feel differently or swung. If you listen to really fast bebop solos like Bird doing rhythm changes you'll hear that the notes are equal length and most notes aren't even accented but every time he changes direction within a bebop line he accents the highest or lowest note of the line. (change of direction) This usually ends up accenting upbeats or syncopated rhythms. This is really hard to teach through writing. Listen to the masters. Kristy