What is Syncopation and How Do We use it?
Looking to add some flair to your music? Repetitive music can cause your audience to lose interest in your song and while some repetition is good it actually falls on an exponential curve of sorts, in which you need the right amount of repetition to create a memorable impact. Too much and your song may become boring, too little and it may be difficult for your audience to follow along. With that in mind, we are going to discuss one of music’s greatest tools: Syncopation.
Syncopation, as it relates to music, is quite simple it entails is disrupting the rhythm of the song (in whole or in part) by shifting when the note is played. Doing this will cause all or part of the song to become off-beat. A metronome, for example, has low levels of syncopation, it is a steady and predictable rhythm. Syncopation calls to attention or accents a part of the song and can be applied to just about every style of music.
Why use syncopation? Syncopation is sort of like music magic. It adds flair, excitement, and playfulness to music by messing with what we are expecting. In a way, it draws our ears in and prevents habituation from occurring. If your song is starting to sound dull or is too predictable you may want to consider syncopating some parts of it to prevent it from sounding repetitive.
You can add syncopation to your music by shifting a note either before the beat or behind the beat. You can also get creative with it like Igor Stravinsky did. Stravinsky experimented a lot with accenting off beats this created a really dramatic effect. Like everything in music, you don’t have to be limited to the constraints of rules and expectations. Take the knowledge you have and then seek out ways to make it your own.