“Sycopation” Basics for Pianists
An easy, but highly interesting timing “trick” every pianist should understand and master
Few words seem more mysterious than “syncopation.” Most piano students are given syncopated pieces at some point When these are presented, however, the pianist too often just plays what the composer or arranger has written. They can hear the interesting sounds and fascinating timing but don’t really understand how that sound and timing is produced. They are just following orders, so to speak. I’d like to explain syncopation in the way my adult students, both live and online, have found useful and successful. Funny thing, it has always been my observation that the adult who understands what they play does a better job at it than the adult who only follows orders.
I’m afraid it’s going to take me a bit to fully explain the basis of syncopation. The explanation, however, will help you play every syncopated music: ragtime, blues, pop, etc.
Definition: “Syncopation” when accented notes are placed in unexpected places
Naturally, there has to be an expected place for this to happen.
Measures are actually one repetition of the pattern of the accented, underlying beats. Consider this: a metronome beat: tick, tick, tick. Metronomes provide at least a tempo and an trustworthy forward motion. However, if this was ALL the rhythm used it would be boring in the extreme. Thus, musicians early on figured out that regularly stressing (accenting) one of the beats would prove much more interesting. The most obvious way is to offer a strong beat, a weak beat, a strong beat, a weak beat, etc. This we call “a 2 feel” and is demonstrated by things like bongos. Other “plans” for regular accents would be “strong weak weak” and “strong weak medium weak” This creates measures with 3 beats and 4 beats, respectively.
These regular patterns of beats are what the measures “measure.” Each measure exists only because there are differently stressed beats. Beats are also what we count. Too many students think we are counting notes. Measures can exist without notes at all. However, as pianists, we are in charge of choosing notes, chords, etc. that establish the stresses in the minds of the listeners. Often that strong first beat is created by the chord root, a stronger note than the other notes of the chord. The composer of piano music must take this into account in the writing. I suppose it’s often a matter of habit that composers use to create those strong first beats.
However it’s done, once those stresses are in place, everyone listening and experiencing the music comes to expect and even depend on a stress right there on that particular beat.
A common way to establish the stress pattern in the minds of listeners is to recognize that people in our western musical system are used to certain patterns of stressed beats and allow this previous knowledge to create an expectation of stresses. We then take advantage of this expectation and place our more powerful notes somewhere the listeners do NOT expect them to be.
Here’s a common example.
Notice that in 4 counts to the measure there is a strong stress on count one and a medium strong stress on count 3. There are also beats on counts two and four but these are weaker than those on counts one and three. When we syncopate, we place long notes or chords (and/or strong notes or chords) either on the weak beats 2 or 4 or even BETWEEN the beats. Our expectations lead us to hear this as an being an unusual placement of such strong note/chord, thus surprising us. This trick of timing we call “syncopation.”
To play syncopation, I suggest you count your music until you “feel” the rhythm and then use that feel instead. For more advanced coverage of this topic and many others see the ebook “Dan Starr’s Big Book of Adult Piano” available here.
Tags: 3 Beats, Accents, Adult Students, Arranger, Few Words, Forward Motion, Funny Thing, Measures, Metronome, Musicians, Observation, Pianist, Pianists, piano students, Ragtime Blues, Repetition, Rhythm, Syncopated Music, Syncopation, Unexpected Places
