Syncopation
Syncopation places rhythmic accents on weak beats or between beats, disrupting the expected pattern of a regular pulse.
Musical meter: The organization of beats into recurring patterns of strong and weak pulses. Syncopation gains its effect by contradicting the hierarchy of strong and weak beats.
Jazz: A musical tradition rooted in African American communities, known for improvisation, swing, and varied ensemble styles. Jazz musicians use syncopation to animate melodies, accompaniments, and improvisations.
Rhythm: The organization of sounds and silences in time. Syncopation is a way of shaping rhythm through unexpected emphasis.
Rubato: Expressive flexibility in musical timing that speeds up or slows down without a fixed tempo change. Rubato alters timing broadly, whereas syncopation specifically displaces rhythmic emphasis.
Beat (music): The regular pulse underlying a piece of music. A stable pulse makes displaced accents perceptible as syncopation.
Ragtime: An American piano style of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, marked by syncopated melodies over steady bass patterns. Ragtime makes the contrast between a regular bass and syncopated melody especially clear.
Time signature: A notation marking that indicates how beats are grouped and counted in a measure. The time signature helps establish which beat positions listeners expect to be strong.
Anticipation (music): A musical event sounded before the beat or harmony on which it is expected to occur. Anticipation is one specific timing gesture that can create syncopation.
Accent (music): Emphasis that makes a musical sound stand out through dynamics, duration, pitch, or articulation. Syncopation depends on emphasis falling somewhere other than its expected metrical position.
Ska: A Jamaican popular music style whose guitar or piano often accents the offbeats. Ska foregrounds offbeat accompaniment as a defining rhythmic feature.