Lesson 10: Syncopation (2 Parts)
Overview: These two videos cover 8th Note and 16th Note Syncopation in depth! This lesson is split into two parts.
Assignment: Either pages 51 - 62 in Teaching Rhythm by Joel Rothman, or pages 33 - 46 in Syncopation by Ted Reed.
Part 1: 8th Note Syncopation
Intro to 8th Note Syncopation
Welcome back to the rhythm and reading series. This lesson is about Syncopation, and in particular, 8th Note Syncopation. We’ll talk about 16th note syncopation in the second part.
The first video starts with me playing an exercise on the drum set. Take a moment now to watch the video and open the PDF of exercises and grooves, since I’ll be referencing it throughout both lessons.
You’ll notice that the music is pretty straightforward; it’s just 8th notes and quarter notes. So what makes this sheet music special; why does it sound different?
The answer lies in a musical concept called syncopation and it relates to the feel and the sound of music, which can be a little abstract. But luckily there’s a specific way to notate it so that as a musician, you know you are playing a syncopated rhythm.
Let’s look at an “official” definition of syncopation.
Since syncopation has to do with sound and feeling, it can be difficult to define, but I thought that Miles Hoffman, who is a violinist and the founder of the American Chamber Players did a great job:
“Syncopation is the placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur.”
Let’s let that marinate.
He goes on to say,
“In traditional Western music the first beat of a bar, the downbeat, is the strongest, but syncopation shifts the emphasis to weaker beats, or to subdivisions of beats.”
“Syncopation is the placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn’t normally occur.”
Without hearing syncopation and understanding what the change in the sound and the flow feels like, this doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.
So let’s talk a little bit about the facts that Hoffman has put into this:
In Western music, there’s a normal or traditional way that music pulses and flows. That’s true and we’re going to get into that.
Syncopation changes that flow and that’s what this lesson is about. We’ll look into that next.
The way syncopation does that is by emphasizing weak beats within the measure by stressing and/or accenting them.
When he says Stressing, what I believe he’s talking about is the introduction of more duration. We play the note for a longer amount of time. That makes it sound like it’s a little more important in the music.
The other way to do that is by Accenting it - by playing it louder. And of course that makes that note stand out as well. It makes it sound more important.
Many times the note is emphasized with a combination of both duration and accent.
The whole idea is that we want weak beats to sound like strong beats and that’s what perks our ear.
So next, we’re going to look at the traditional pulse and flow of Western music because it’s important to know where we're coming from. Then, we’ll look at how syncopation changes that.
After that, we’ll wrap up with some rhythmic notation. We’ll analyze the rhythm to understand how it works and how it’s written so that you know you are playing a syncopated rhythm when you see it.
Strong and Weak Beats in a Measure of 4/4 Time (Coins Animation)
I put together this animation to demonstrate how the strong and weak beats are traditionally distributed in a measure of 4/4 time.
There are 16 glasses on a table. Each glass represents a 16th note in the measure.
Next, I’ll add a coin to each glass representing where we would normally play whole notes, half notes, quarter notes, 8th notes and 16th notes.
I’ll start with the whole note, which can only be placed on beat 1 because it takes up all 4 beats.
Next I’ll add coins for the half notes. There’s a coin on beat 1 and on beat 3 because we can have two half notes in the measure.
There are four quarter notes in a measure of 4/4, so I’ll add a coin to each of the numbered glasses.
Those quarter notes can be subdivided into 8th notes. So we add another coin to all of the numbered glasses, but also add a coin for all of the glasses labelled “&”.
Finally, we get to 16th notes and we add a coin to every single glass.
When I remove the glasses and we look at how many coins we have in each column, we end up with a chart of how strong each beat and subdivision normally is in the measure.
I can draw a line through the top coin in each stack to show you where the strong and weak beats land.
Beat 1 is the downbeat of the bar and it's called that because it's the strongest beat in the measure. This chart is evidence proving why it's so strong - it gets a coin every single time.
Beat 3 is the next strongest beat and I like to think of it like a secondary strong point in the measure. It's not as strong as beat 1, but it's very grounding to the overall feel of the music.
Beat 2 and beat 4 are next in strength. Not quite as strong as beat 1 or 3 but strong enough to drive the pulse of the music forward.
After that, the 8th note upbeat comes next in strength; with the 16th note upbeats being the weakest points of the measure.
Strong and Weak beats in a Basic Rock Groove
This above chart translates directly to how some drum set beats are played. So, I'm going to give a few examples so you can hear how this works.
Starting with the downbeat I'll add a kick drum because it's the biggest drum and adds low end to the groove.
Then I'll add another kick to beat 3 which is our secondary strong point. Just the nature of the drum adds enough emphasis to this beat.
For beats 2 and 4, I'll play a snare drum; and for you drum set players out there, you'll start to see the pattern developing. The snare drum has enough emphasis to drive the groove but it's not as big or deep as the bass drum.
Our hi-hat will drive the 8th notes. You'll notice that by themselves they’re thin and metallic sounding, but on the beats they combine with the kick and snare to create more emphasis.
Finally, I don't play a hi-hat with beat 1. That's because it would only be as strong as beat 3 if I did that. It needs to be stronger.
So instead I'll play a crash cymbal. It's explosive and has a lot of sustain (accented and longer duration).
You can hear me demonstrate this groove in the video and you can read along using the PDF of grooves I included with this lesson.
Note: I don’t mention the 16th notes in these grooves because I’m focusing on 8th note syncopation. But if you’re familiar with drum set playing, you can likely imagine that ghost notes played on the 16th upbeats (e’s and a’s) would be very weak in the flow of the measure, hence the reason they are ghosted.
Syncopated 8th Note Rock Beats
Hopefully you were able to hear how the basic rock beat outlined the strong and weak beats of the measure. But what happens if I move that strong downbeat to another part of the measure?
Let's say we want to move the emphasis to the “&” of beat 4 (diagram above). To accomplish that sound, I'll need to change the instruments that I'm playing on the upbeat. So I move the kick and crash to the upbeat of beat 4.
We need to remember that one of the characteristics of a syncopated rhythm is that it also adds length or duration to the weak beat. So, I’ve had to de-emphasize beat 1. That's why it becomes a hi-hat with no kick drum.
Let's say we'd like to try a rhythm where the emphasis is on the “&” of 1. We can do that by playing a kick and crash there. But to be truly syncopated, we also have to account for the extra duration it needs. That means pushing back the snare drum and hi-hat combo from beat 2 to the “&” of 2.
8th Note Syncopation - Notation
Now you have an idea of what it sounds like to take a typically weak beat, like an 8th note upbeat, and give it an emphasis like a strong beat (kind of like a downbeat).
Just note that the examples I played are not the only ways that you can play syncopation in a rock beat, but hopefully it gave you enough contrast to hear the difference between weak and strong beats.
When we have a kick drum and a crash cymbal playing where we traditionally don't have that sort of emphasis, it really changes the flow of the music.
Reading 8th Note Syncopation
Syncopation is written and notated in a very specific way, and that's so that the player knows “OK, I need to give this rhythm a different sort of emphasis.”
Let's start by looking at the opening exercise again (in PDF). You'll notice that there are quarter notes in places we don't usually expect to find them. Not all of them are on the beats, some of them are on the upbeats.
Now let's take a closer look at how that works.
Here we're in 2/4 time, which means we have two beats in the measure and the quarter note gets the beat. The top line is the played rhythm and the bottom line is there to give you a reference for where the quarter note beat is.
If you remember back to the lessons on 8th notes (for free on my website or YouTube), you learned that a quarter note can be subdivided into two equal 8th notes.
You may also recall that the beam that groups the 8ths is there to help you see the beat clearly. Really, you can also just write this measure as four 8th notes; it sounds the same.
One of the hard, fast rules about rhythm notation is that the individual note durations absolutely must add up to match the time signature. You can use any combination of notes as long as this is true.
So with that in mind, we can take the two middle 8th notes and replace them with a single quarter note. When we add up all the durations, the measure still works; but now it's written in this very specific way.
So let's take a closer look at this rhythm.
In the first measure, we have an example of how the syncopated rhythm is written. This is how you will see it in music. You’ll notice that there's a quarter note on the “+” of 1. It's on an upbeat, not a downbeat.
The 2nd measure shows you how it sounds. This is very important because it shows you that the quarter note should be held out for its full duration. That is a key characteristic of syncopation. The weak note (the 8th note upbeat of beat 1) becomes emphasized by adding duration.
If you go back to the lesson on ties and dots, you'll remember that the tie means to combine the tied notes’ durations; we don't play the 2nd note. We keep holding on to the 1st note through the duration of the 2nd.
When we play an instrument like a trumpet, we would hold the note out for a full quarter note length. The length of the note is what gives it the initial emphasis.
When we play this on a drum set or an instrument without sustain, we can create this feeling by playing a cymbal crash or bass drum, or an accent if you're playing on a single drum (like in a snare drum solo).
The last measure shows us how to count this. We play the 1, we play the "+", we don't play on beat 2 (we play through it), but we play again on the "+" of 2.
8th Note Syncopation Improvised Interpretation
Here's how I came up with my solo/improvised interpretation on the drum set.
Whenever I saw an 8th note, I played a snare drum. I thought it provided a nice, crisp, short attack and a pop that lasted an 8th note. In my mind that's an 8th note.
Then I played crashes and kick drums on all the quarter notes. Again I wanted length and emphasis on those quarters, so the result is the exercise you saw at the beginning.
8th Note Syncopation Conclusion
That’s 8th note syncopation. If you want to practice more rhythms just like these I have two books that you can check out. I’ll mention them at the end of this booklet.
16th Note Syncopation is next, which I really like because to me, it’s a bit more exciting rhythmically.
Remember, if you like this video and the other videos in the series, you can also book private lesson time with me in my scheduler. I’d be happy to help you build a plan to become a better drummer.
“One of the hard, fast rules about rhythm notation is that the individual note durations absolutely must add up to match the time signature. You can use any combination of notes as long as this is true.”
Part 2: 16th Note Syncopation
Intro to 16th Note Syncopation
In Part 1, we learned that syncopation is a musical term for what happens when we play a weak beat with the emphasis of a strong beat.
16th note syncopation works in exactly the same way. We’re taking the weakest part of the measure - the 16th note upbeat (which would be the “e” or the “a” within a beat) - and we’re playing it with the same sort of emphasis that we would play an 8th note or stronger.
I put together another version of that coin animation to show you how that works.
Strong and Weak Subdivisions within a Beat (Coins Animation)
Again I have 16 glasses on a table. Representing all of the 16th notes in a measure of 4/4 time.
I’m going to add a coin to each glass representing where we would normally play quarter notes, 8th notes and 16th notes.
I’ll start with quarter notes. That’s because we’re looking at syncopation within the subdivision of a beat. So I’ll need to include the beat in this chart.
I’ll add a coin to each numbered glass to show where we would normally play quarter notes.
Next we’ll look at the first subdivision, the 8th note. I’ll add a coin to each beat again, and then add a coin to each upbeat.
Since this is all about 16th note syncopation, I’ll add a coin to each glass for each 16th note.
We end up with a chart of the strong and weak subdivisions within a measure.
In this case, the beats are the strongest parts of the measure, the next strongest are the 8th notes, and the weakest are the 16th notes. In 16th note syncopation, we want to emphasize those weak 16ths.
Let’s look at beat 1 and emphasize the “e” using syncopation. We would extend it’s duration and/or accent it to get the right effect. But we will also have to deemphasize the "&" to make room for that emphasis.
Now let’s look at beat 2. I want to emphasize the “a” in beat 2, it’s another weak subdivision of the beat.
To syncopate this 16th, I have to deemphasize the 3. The “a” hangs over beat three, otherwise it wouldn’t sound syncopated.
Note: That the number of coins in the columns do not directly relate to quarter notes or 8th notes. They’re supposed to represent the ups and downs of the flow of music. The amount of accent or emphasis is going to be dictated by the music you’re playing. The composer, the conductor, your band mates and YOU will decide exactly how dramatic the syncopation will be and it’ll all come down to musical taste.
Syncopated 16th Note Rock Groove
So, before we move on, let’s listen to how 16th note syncopation can affect a rock beat.
In the first example, I’ll be playing a heavy emphasis on the “a” of beat 4, the last 16th note. I'll be playing two-measure phrases, the first is straight ahead and the second contains the syncopation.
In the second example, I’ll be putting the emphasis on the “e” of beat 4, but you’ll notice that I kept the emphasis on beat 1. That’s because it’s very musically effective to do that.
Like I said earlier, the amount of syncopation is all about what you and your bandmates, or the composer, or the music, calls for. So, in this example I'm going to play a crash on the first beat of measure one only. Then I will syncopate the “e” of beat 4 in the second measure.
That's the musical concept behind syncopation and hopefully you can hear what it's done to our typical rock groove. Now we're going to check out some notation by looking at the opening exercise to see how it's written.
“The amount of accent or emphasis is going to be dictated by the music you’re playing.”
Reading 16th Note Syncopation
Now we’re going to check out some notation by looking at the opening exercise. You can find it in the exercises and grooves PDF.
I put together an exercise that includes a good sampling of typical syncopated 16th note rhythms. You should notice that I have 8th notes in positions where you normally see 16th notes - specifically, 8th notes on the “e’s” and “a’s”. So let's take a look at these rhythms in depth.
Since we're talking about 16th note syncopation will start with two beats of 16th notes. Each pair of 16ths takes up the same amount of time as a single 8th note.
So far, in these lessons, when 8ths and 16ths were mixed within a beat everything happened in line with a pulse of the 8th notes.
We’ve seen rhythms like these before. In beat 1 I have one 8th note and two 16ths. And then in beat two is the opposite. Two 16ths followed by an 8th note - nice and lined up with the 8th note pulse.
But are those the only two pairs of 16ths in these beats? What about the middle pairs of 16ths?
They can also be combined to equal a single 8th note and that's how we would syncopate the “e” of these two beats. We give the “e” emphasis and duration by making it an 8th note. And by default that makes the beat on the “+” deemphasized.
Let's take a closer look at this rhythm. In the first measure below, you see the rhythm as it is written in music. From left to right it includes a 16th (you can see that as a double beam), an 8th note with a single beam, and a final 16th note.
In the second measure, you can see how it's played. It's very important to notice that the second and third 16ths are tied together. That's because the duration of the “e” needs to last for two 16ths (or, in other words, an 8th note). Just like we saw in the video for 8th note syncopation, the increase in duration creates the change in emphasis.
In the last measure you can see how to count it. You would play on the beat, then the “e”, you don't play on the "+", and you play again on the “a”.
This exercise also has a few other syncopated rhythms to note.
In these measures, we don't just have an 8th note playing on the “e”; we have a dotted 8th note. If you remember back to the lesson on Dots and Ties, the dot extends the rhythm by half. A dotted 8th note is worth three 16th notes.
Remember, the idea of syncopation is about creating emphasis, primarily by lengthening the duration of weak notes. So, a dotted 8th here definitely lengthens the “e” but also keeps the total rhythmic duration within the time signature.
The last rhythm we’ll look at closely is this syncopation on the “a” of beat 1. You’ll notice that it is tied to beat 2, and not replaced by an 8th note. I looked around in my drum books and I found that in general, 16th note syncopation that went over the beat in this way was written with tied notes.
My best guess for why it’s written this way is that it's easier to see the beats of the measure. I found some examples where it was replaced by an 8th note, but it tended to be in situations where there were other syncopated rhythms written in the measure.
16th Note Syncopation Improvised Interpretations
So now I’ll bring back that original exercise with an interpretation on the snare drum. You can read along and you should understand the rhythms a lot better now.
Now that you've heard it on the snare drum, and can understand what the rhythms are about, I'll do my drum set interpretation again between the snare drum and the hi hat and kick.
16th Note Syncopation Conclusion
So that is it for the syncopation portion of the Rhythm and Reading series. I hope you enjoyed it, and I hope that you can hear how important it has been in creating the modern music we listen to.
It has really shaped music for the last hundred years and that makes it such an important concept.
It’s undoubtedly something you've heard and now you know it has a name - syncopation. It’s the accenting or emphasis of a weak beat or subdivision within a measure to absolutely change the flow and shape of the music. It’s all about the sound.
So if you want to practice more rhythms just like this there are two books you could check out. There's Joel Rothman's Teaching Rhythm and Ted Reed’s Progressive Steps To Syncopation for the Modern Drummer.
They both pretty much cover the same concepts. There's standard rhythm reading in the beginning and then they get into syncopation towards the middle of the book. I definitely highly recommend either one of them for additional exercises.
Finally, you can check out ChristianJohnsonDrums.com for more lessons.
I also have a private lesson scheduler on my site. I teach privately and if you have any questions about this lesson or any of the other lessons, or if you want regular drum lessons with me, I would really love to give it back to you. You can check my scheduler to find a time that works for you, and sign up.
Until next time, you can follow me on my socials at SeeJohnsonDrum or check me out on YouTube where you can subscribe to my channel.