What is Syncopation in Music, & How Does it Work?

Click on the button below to hear this episode about syncopation:

Here is a transcript of the podcast in case you want to follow along:

Hi there. This is Duane. There are so many things in music, just little items that you really ought to know over the years. I like to share some of the things with you from time to time, just little bits and pieces. None of these tips that I’m giving you is monumental in itself, but they add up. When you know just lots and lots of different little things like this over the course of years and a lifetime, they really add up into a cumulative amount, which enables you as a musician to advance in ways that just isn’t possible if you don’t know things like this, unless you’re blessed with the talent of Mozart, which I’m not. Guys like me who don’t have an abundance of talent, we have to struggle with concepts. The more concepts we learn and the tools we add, the more they help us to live up to our own potential.

Syncopation in music is very much similar to humor in literature or in spoken, oral tradition as well. It’s a surprise, is what it is. In music it’s where a heavy beat … a long note happens where you expect a short note. That creates a sense of surprise or syncopation. It’s like a big guy sitting in a little tiny chair. You almost have that kind of sense.

When a long note … think of a long note as a big heavy guy and he sits down in this little chair, in other words, he sits down on an and where you expect an eighth note to occur. You have that sense of surprise. In this illustration here, (Duane Playing Piano). Right? You have that da DA, t’DA, t’DA, right? It’s not, (Duane Playing Piano) and it’s not (Duane Playing Piano). There, the beats are where you expect them to be right on one or on a heavy beat, but when you get into syncopation, the beats are on the off-beats. One and (Duane Playing Piano).

When the heavy beats happen on the ends, that’s where you get syncopation.

Does syncopation only apply to Ragtime or Jazz or the Blues? No. Syncopation applies to lots and lots of music. If you look through some of Bach’s stuff, you’ll find that sometimes he used quarter notes or half notes on ands, and that created a surprise. We think of syncopation as a product of the Blues or some pop music, but it doesn’t have to be. It’s just a sense of surprise where a long note happens on a weak beat.

Well, think about that and look for examples of that in your music. That’s just one of the many zillions of things you need to know as you grow as a musician. Thanks for being with me and we’ll see you next month. Bye bye for now.

Here is the podcast on Spreaker: http://www.spreaker.com/user/duaneshinn/syncopation_in_music

And here is Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syncopation