The fun thing about composing based on what sounds nice to you, knowing almost nothing about music theory, is that you use techniques that you never knew someone bothered to name or, in this case, didn't know ot was an actual technique and not just something people do
This is true. I just do things I heard someone else do and i think that's true of all untrained musicians. Though I'm not totally ignorant of chords and harmony.
that's the 'theory' in music theory - it's our best scientific explanation of a real phenomenon you can hear, observe, experience. whether you stumble upon it 'accidentally', or you intentionally exploit the effect, the fundamental explanation of why it sounds good is the same
What’s better about composing with knowledge of theory is you know what you’re doing right and how to recreate it later instead of going off of vague ideas of what sounds nice
David, this is really excellent, the way you teach and explain. And this explanation of syncopation is masterly and so helpful. So often beginners and even mature students feel 'glued' to the quarter beats when reading sheet music. Perhaps it's the thinking part of the brain that dictates this 'pull' to the quarter beat whereas if one were to close their eyes and to the syncopated pulse, ones would 'feel' the anticipations rather than 'see' them. You do a great service David to all. musicians.
@ I agree. Some syncopated beats are just too complicated or weird to inspire anyone to move. There's plenty of music out there. I was making a generalization.
In my piano lessons, I've been learning to play Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by the Police, which has a lot of anticipated notes that really give the song a lot of momentum between bars. It's pretty tough to play, but also fun once you get the hang of it!
Just listened to See You Again. I'm being completely serious when I say that that final 45 seconds is one of the best things i've ever heard. (Kinda gives me "Exit Music (for a film)" vibes...)
Take Five starts out with a syncopated piano part, and the middle of the last movement of Beethoven's last piano sonata (opus 111) is filled with all sorts of different types of syncopations. Parts of it sound almost jazzy
Oddly enough this video was released at the right time for me. I struggled over the weekend with a track where I forced my melody out of syncopation and could not figure out why it sounded worse. Those little guidelines in my DAW fooled my brain but couldn't fool my ears!
When first clicking on this I only got video with no audio, and I thought "David you clever soul, you syncopated the audio and video!" No, it was just a glitch.
'Audio Pono' by 'Feed Me Jack' has got to be my favourite example of syncopation. That song is all over the place rhythmically, but it all blends together so smoothly
15:42 don't call it bad practice. Sometimes the trasillo is the main beat, and you'd want your musicians to be able to see decisions from it, instead of relative to the grid. I would agree with you if you said that's almost always the better choice, but they should know there are exceptions. Also, a small grievance of mine from playing classical piano: the fact that the tie and the slur look the same is horrible, especially when we're going down a row, or there's both, or how when you have voice leading where some voices stay fixed and it's just a cluttered mess to figure out which ones moved, and hey look at that, the top note moved but there was a slur between chords so you somehow missed it.
In the '50s and '60s it was rather common for well-known artists to cover songs. You would often hear several versions of the same song. The great singers would "make a song their own" by taking bold liberties with the rhythm. One of my favorites, Tony Bennett, did so effortlessly and it added a conversational but deeply emotional character. Others, like Frank Sinatra, often did this gratuitously. It didn't add much to my experience but seemed like a flex as if to say: Look at me!
I would absolutely love to hear Mr Bennett's take on "Dilla Time". Both the book and the ultra-swung feel created and popularized by the great producer J Dilla. What sounds like a sloppy free feeling rhythm is extremely specific and has been adopted by popular music everywhere.
I don't know if this is beyond the scope of this video, but I kind of wish you explained that quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and even 32nd syncopation are all the same thing. The first example of 1/4 note syncopation (10:20) is essentially the same thing as playing only upbeats, just at half tempo. Similarly, the Tresillo rhythm (13:20) is the same rhythm as the "disco tripplets", which happens in Sister Sledge (4:43, the repeating Cs in the bassline), only at half tempo. This is the concept that really allowed syncopation to make sense to me. Essentially, so long as the subdivision is a power of 2 (1/8, 1/16, or 1/32), I could make any rhythm make sense to me by doubling the tempo in my head, and then rethinking all the rhythms using half the subdivision. I used this approach to really understand more advanced syncopation like Meshuggah, instead of just guessing by feel. Hope this made sense.
"Knife Prty" by Deftones has some really interesting 32nd note syncopations in the drums, and they're definitely discernable as 32nd notes. A lot of modern songs use that technique in the vocal melodies, too!
David, can you please do some analysis of Steely Dan, perhaps the famous Mu chord, their chord sequences, their arrangements or simply why their songs always sound so sophisticated?
That would be great. Perhaps you could work out why the song 'Aja' sounds pretty much perfect...or 'Home At Last' ....or 'Babylon Sisters'...I could go on...
The melody of Here, There and Everywhere by The Beatles uses anticipated notes a lot. For example, in the first line of the verse "Here, making each day, of the year" "day" and "year" anticipate the beat by an eighth note.
I wouldn't have picked that particular section to epitomise syncopation by the Beatles, or even within that one song. "day" and "year" fall off the four strongest beats of the bar, but they still fall directly on the eighth notes. Go a bit forward and you find "I need her every(WHERE), and (IF) she's be(SIDE) me (I)", in which "where", "if", "...side", and "I" all fall BETWEEN eighth notes, and in which "..where", "...side" and "I" all anticipate one of the four strongest beats of the bar by a sixteenth note.
@RoderickCairns The "year" though is clearly syncopated in that a naive transcription might put that note on the first beat of the next bar. Which is incorrect and sounds too "straight". That's why I highlighted that one.
Really interesting! I'm currently trying to learn how to write music beyond just a vocal melody (using Musescore because I don't play piano well enough). So far I have written approximately half a song...and I've been using eighth note pushed rhythm in the verses without realising it, just because I thought it sounded good! It's perhaps particularly obvious at the moment because the drum part lacks any embellishments, but still I recognised it from your description. Thanks
A Grace note is also another small amount of time that COULD be notated by a 32nd, 64th or 128th but as you said, it might be indistinguishable from the previously mentioned times depending upon the meter of the song. Good Video.
18:18 Another case of syncopation would be to have a regular flow of notes (1/8 notes for eg), all the same pitch as basis, and few accented at higher pitch off beats (for eg E B E F E E E F ). Tis is quite common in metal guitar. So it is not the flow of notes which is syncopated, but the pitch accentation in the pattern. 🎸
When you demonstrated the Pushed Rhythm, I immediately thought of Give It Up by KC and the Sunshine Band. Also, I think The Model by Kraftwerk uses the Tresillo rhythm.
Great video as always. But such a pity that there wasn't any ska beat example. If there's a typical example of syncopated offbeat, it's this music, isn't it?
Very interesting video, but I feel it was lacking in a couple areas, like there's maybe too much attention paid to syncopated melodies and not enough attention paid to syncopated percussion, which is central to a lot of genres of music. Also, this might not be your area of expertise, but I feel like no video on syncopation is really complete without a discussion of hip-hop and the unique ways in which that genre employs syncopated percussion.
Got to say That was a 4D chess move to promote your album! You Got me intrigued! I'll definitely check it out😊 Also I would like to hear your process of making an album, how long did it take, any challenges you faced
16:30 -- to be fair to musescore, there is a command to have the program standardize the notation to, for example, draw the tie across the the mid-bar.
One song that immediately comes to mind for me is "Linus and Lucy" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio - from Peanuts. The syncopation in both the left hand bass and the right hand melody make this song nearly impossible for me to play
Joe Walsh used "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" in a medley and it was (arguably) better than Vince's original. But I've never heard a cover of "Linus and Lucy" that was nearly as good as the original. Vince Guaraldi was a master of nuance.
Never occurred to me before that "Free Fallin" is essentially just one three-minute long F major chord, with its third being variably suspended at the fourth, suspended at the second, or resolved. That's all the song is, harmonically, from go to whoa. When the bass comes in, it sort of recontextualises Fsus4 as Bbsus2, and Fsus2 as Csus4, but they're still the same chords. A master class in how to do a lot with incredibly little.
I am playing a Bulgarian dance in the irregular 7/8 rhythm, and I found it tricky to play the syncopation between two adjacent bars. The score for this dance is in the description of my video Dobrudzanska Rachenitsa (my latest video on my channel, grigpit). The legato occurs between the last note of bar 62 and the first note of bar 63.
I think quarter note syncopation can be recognized and legitimized as such when used in a context that breaks from the normal mold or cadence of a song. So if the rhythm of a song makes you anticipate the next note to be on beat 1 but the next note comes on beat 2 to continue or repeat the melody.
“The” syncopated song is Birdland by Weather Report. There’s a Stevie Wonder song that has a bass line with an incredible syncopation throughout . I can’t think of the name now though.
I think that reputedly the first disco song, Gloria Gaynor's Never Can Say Goodbye, has a dominant syncopated hi hat right through. Alan Schwarchenberg on drums, session great.
Minimal Techno uses syncopation to give it a groove usually supplied on the hihats , shakers and toms. The use swing on the bass and is what makes it nice to dance too.
I would have added the fact that syncopation not only happens during a weak beat, but it also extend towards a strong beat. So, if you have a note that is happening on the second eight note of your first quarter note, and it last a whole quarter note, so it starts in a weak beat, goes through a strong beat and ends in a weak beat, that kind of thing, that would be a syncopated note that extends towards a strong beat. I think this is important because I think it's what tells it appart from a backbeat. I'm not sure if that's how it works in English language music theory too...
Myxomatosis, but not the much disputed syncopation in Videotape?? Maybe Videotape could have it's own video? I'd really like to hear what you have to say about it.
Kokomo by Gene and Eunice uses the tresillo rhythm. Kokomo was covered extensively at the time and perhaps embedded tresillo in 50"s rocknroll and doowop, eg the door wop classic Little Darling
I don't understand why 16th note syncopation is more extreme based on the syncopated note being further "off the grid" than an 8th note. Because the 16th note is only further away from the strong beat of the bar when you choose the 4th 16th note of the bar. If you choose the 2nd 16th note, it would be closer. But even in the case of of the 4th 16th note, it's still closer to the 'grid' because it's closer to the strong beat of the next bar. I can feel what you're saying when I listen to the music, but is it possible to do 16th note syncopation in a different way that it feels less extreme, or would that just not sound good?
The drums to A Devil Among The Tailors by At The Drive-in was what immediately came to mind with the Tresillo rhythm. And I the syncopation of the chorus of Hard to Handle by Otis Redding is why I like it so much, and why I really don't like the Black Crowes cover, they basically unsyncopated the vocals.
Much of Elton’s piano playing in his earlier music literally abounds with syncopation. Before I understood music I used to call it stumbling as he would hold back and catch up as he played. A good example would be Madman Across the Water or even better Country Comfort.
with the Radiohead section I am surprised Videotape wasn't mentioned with its piano being desynced from everything else, though I do note it is very subtle and there are other more outward cases of syncopation to talk about (like Myxomatosis, which did get discussed)
In the beginning of jazz, there is a stumble on the third beat of a 4/4 time tune. I forget the term that's used to describe it but it steps away from the tight time of a marching band. And was quoted as the beginning of jazz music. Credited to a trumpet player bolan?
Hi, @DavidBennetPiano . I think, syncopation in songs happens more often to meet the stress of the word sung on the particular notesand the flow of the lyrics, like the example of your own song demonstrates (the word "word" in this case). English with it's relativly short words and simple stressing doesn't make it quite obvious, but languages with more longer words (three syllables and up), like German, or more complex stressing , like French, demonstrates my point better, I think.
Kind of odd but I always watch you videos at 2x speed for the content. See you again at the artificial higher tempo I really do prefer as it makes it very swingy sounding. I get it's not the direction of the song but I think there's so much energy potential there
Transcribing many of my song's rhythms is hard due to instinctive syncopation that I seemed to have picked up somewhere; the way I play them never quite matches how they sound when played from the transcriptions. I often end up writing weird 16th or 32nd offsets to get them to match more closely.
Funny enough, that tresillo rhythm pops up a lot in electronic music as well. It’s pretty much instant groove, especially with the kick ducking out some parts to emphasize the syncopation. And well, I think it pops up a lot in other places because I think that dotted quarter or dotted eighth gives that drive while still keeping in the grid (you could also apply with polymeters with the constant dotted quarters or eighths, but it’s up to you on how long you’ll play them). Tresillos and double tresillos played on their own still have that drive and tricks you to thinking it’s speeding up, but when placed against a simple pulse, it can turn them into a groove. I wouldn’t say they’re a cliché, but given how prevalent it is, they might as well be (and a catchy one, at that).
@@cakemartyr5794 From what I’m listening, I think it’s the arpeggiated synth part. Idk if I could count it as a tresillo rhythm, but maybe so given the 3-3-2.
@@GBRen-xc2ow OK. I'm approaching this academically but the sheet music I have of The Model shows the rhythm in exactly the same way that David shows tresillo.
Unsyncopated "Feel Good, Inc" sounds so cursed 💀
@@abxorb Feel Bad, Inc.
@DavidBennettPiano Hahaha exactly! 😂
Bro steels from his own comments
@ well I actually made the same joke without realising
@@DavidBennettPiano I just happened to beat you to it lol
"to avoid my video getting nuked by the estate of Marvin Gaye"
The fun thing about composing based on what sounds nice to you, knowing almost nothing about music theory, is that you use techniques that you never knew someone bothered to name or, in this case, didn't know ot was an actual technique and not just something people do
This is true. I just do things I heard someone else do and i think that's true of all untrained musicians. Though I'm not totally ignorant of chords and harmony.
EXACTLY!
that's the 'theory' in music theory - it's our best scientific explanation of a real phenomenon you can hear, observe, experience. whether you stumble upon it 'accidentally', or you intentionally exploit the effect, the fundamental explanation of why it sounds good is the same
What’s better about composing with knowledge of theory is you know what you’re doing right and how to recreate it later instead of going off of vague ideas of what sounds nice
i think it's a little bit funny that david covered like every time signature before the concept of syncopation
If it makes you want to march, it's not syncopated. If it makes you want to move your hips, it's syncopated.
This is an excellent way of looking at it :-)
David, this is really excellent, the way you teach and explain. And this explanation of syncopation is masterly and so helpful. So often beginners and even mature students feel 'glued' to the quarter beats when reading sheet music. Perhaps it's the thinking part of the brain that dictates this 'pull' to the quarter beat whereas if one were to close their eyes and to the syncopated pulse, ones would 'feel' the anticipations rather than 'see' them. You do a great service David to all. musicians.
not necessarily
@ I agree. Some syncopated beats are just too complicated or weird to inspire anyone to move. There's plenty of music out there. I was making a generalization.
@ some non-syncopated beats make you wanna move too
I learned syncopation with “More than words” by Extreme. It opened a whole new field. Interesting lesson, thank you.
In my piano lessons, I've been learning to play Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic by the Police, which has a lot of anticipated notes that really give the song a lot of momentum between bars. It's pretty tough to play, but also fun once you get the hang of it!
Just listened to See You Again.
I'm being completely serious when I say that that final 45 seconds is one of the best things i've ever heard.
(Kinda gives me "Exit Music (for a film)" vibes...)
Thank you!!! That means alot 😊😊😊
Take Five starts out with a syncopated piano part, and the middle of the last movement of Beethoven's last piano sonata (opus 111) is filled with all sorts of different types of syncopations. Parts of it sound almost jazzy
Oddly enough this video was released at the right time for me. I struggled over the weekend with a track where I forced my melody out of syncopation and could not figure out why it sounded worse. Those little guidelines in my DAW fooled my brain but couldn't fool my ears!
OUSTANDING work David - YOU ARE appreciated bro
Thank you 😊
That Tresillo rhythm placed over the half note kick instantly made me think of Reggaeton.
When first clicking on this I only got video with no audio, and I thought "David you clever soul, you syncopated the audio and video!" No, it was just a glitch.
@@Russkull888 😂
'Audio Pono' by 'Feed Me Jack' has got to be my favourite example of syncopation. That song is all over the place rhythmically, but it all blends together so smoothly
1:48 As 12 Tone put it, "for something to be syncopated, it needs a steady rhythm to syncopate against"
Brother, I love music and knew a good amount about songs, BUT I have learned so much about music theory from YOU. I love your channel.
In Feel Good Inc, an even better example would have been the melody itself. It's pretty heavily syncopated IIRC.
Exactly. We sing in a choir. That is how I as a singer define syncopation: when the bases are a beat off from the higher parts.
Your videos are always instructive fun and very well thought out. Good work again David!
@@DreamsongsProductions thank you 😊
I thought I knew _something_ about syncopation, but you have _increased_ my understanding considerably, David :-)
15:42 don't call it bad practice. Sometimes the trasillo is the main beat, and you'd want your musicians to be able to see decisions from it, instead of relative to the grid. I would agree with you if you said that's almost always the better choice, but they should know there are exceptions.
Also, a small grievance of mine from playing classical piano: the fact that the tie and the slur look the same is horrible, especially when we're going down a row, or there's both, or how when you have voice leading where some voices stay fixed and it's just a cluttered mess to figure out which ones moved, and hey look at that, the top note moved but there was a slur between chords so you somehow missed it.
This video is brilliant. Seriously, it’s so good. Amazing work
In the '50s and '60s it was rather common for well-known artists to cover songs. You would often hear several versions of the same song. The great singers would "make a song their own" by taking bold liberties with the rhythm. One of my favorites, Tony Bennett, did so effortlessly and it added a conversational but deeply emotional character. Others, like Frank Sinatra, often did this gratuitously. It didn't add much to my experience but seemed like a flex as if to say: Look at me!
Your explanations are awesome! Thank you for what you do.
I would absolutely love to hear Mr Bennett's take on "Dilla Time". Both the book and the ultra-swung feel created and popularized by the great producer J Dilla. What sounds like a sloppy free feeling rhythm is extremely specific and has been adopted by popular music everywhere.
I'd be interested in watching that.
I don't know if this is beyond the scope of this video, but I kind of wish you explained that quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and even 32nd syncopation are all the same thing. The first example of 1/4 note syncopation (10:20) is essentially the same thing as playing only upbeats, just at half tempo. Similarly, the Tresillo rhythm (13:20) is the same rhythm as the "disco tripplets", which happens in Sister Sledge (4:43, the repeating Cs in the bassline), only at half tempo.
This is the concept that really allowed syncopation to make sense to me. Essentially, so long as the subdivision is a power of 2 (1/8, 1/16, or 1/32), I could make any rhythm make sense to me by doubling the tempo in my head, and then rethinking all the rhythms using half the subdivision. I used this approach to really understand more advanced syncopation like Meshuggah, instead of just guessing by feel.
Hope this made sense.
You just always manage to find a new and very interesting topic to cover😊And I love Blues!😊
"Knife Prty" by Deftones has some really interesting 32nd note syncopations in the drums, and they're definitely discernable as 32nd notes. A lot of modern songs use that technique in the vocal melodies, too!
Love your songs David. Please share more with your videos! Best regards from Argentina
Great content! The combination of the tension of a straight drum and the syncopated keys. Thanks for the video lesson
Ska - A whole genre of syncopation?
I love that you talked about quarter note syncopation. I'd bever heard anyone talk about it, but I figured out on my own that it was the same concept
David, can you please do some analysis of Steely Dan, perhaps the famous Mu chord, their chord sequences, their arrangements or simply why their songs always sound so sophisticated?
I second that request. I've seen other analysis of the Mu chord but I'd love to hear David's take on the subject.
That would be great. Perhaps you could work out why the song 'Aja' sounds pretty much perfect...or 'Home At Last' ....or 'Babylon Sisters'...I could go on...
A very syncopated band, thanks to the likes of Steve Gadd and Bernard Purdey!
Yes, come on David! How about an anylysis of their brilliant chord voicings?
My guy made us wait until 14.18 for the Radiohead example!😱
Great stuff as always David, thanks!👌
But no Beatles! 🤣🤣🤣
The melody of Here, There and Everywhere by The Beatles uses anticipated notes a lot. For example, in the first line of the verse "Here, making each day, of the year" "day" and "year" anticipate the beat by an eighth note.
I wouldn't have picked that particular section to epitomise syncopation by the Beatles, or even within that one song. "day" and "year" fall off the four strongest beats of the bar, but they still fall directly on the eighth notes. Go a bit forward and you find "I need her every(WHERE), and (IF) she's be(SIDE) me (I)", in which "where", "if", "...side", and "I" all fall BETWEEN eighth notes, and in which "..where", "...side" and "I" all anticipate one of the four strongest beats of the bar by a sixteenth note.
@RoderickCairns The "year" though is clearly syncopated in that a naive transcription might put that note on the first beat of the next bar. Which is incorrect and sounds too "straight". That's why I highlighted that one.
Thanks for this. As a mediocre guitarist I realise now that I sometimes do this but couldn't have told you what I'm doing. Just that it feels right.
David Bennett save me... save me David Bennett...
From what?
@DavidBennettPiano from mediocrity.... ur vids are enlightening
It's David Bennett Piano for you
Is that from that one dude praying to Donald Trump? 😂
Only Jesus can do that..
love your videos bro
keep up!
Thanks, will do!
feel good inc syncopated sounds more like feel bad inc
Doofenshmirtz Inc.
@@littledreamer2492 😂😂
@@thejudgingtrash"DOOFENSHMIRTZ EVIL INCORPORATED!!!"
Love your videos David, and this one's a banger. Also that "Blue" tune of yours is so Radiohead, I think I just got the bends.
Really interesting! I'm currently trying to learn how to write music beyond just a vocal melody (using Musescore because I don't play piano well enough). So far I have written approximately half a song...and I've been using eighth note pushed rhythm in the verses without realising it, just because I thought it sounded good! It's perhaps particularly obvious at the moment because the drum part lacks any embellishments, but still I recognised it from your description. Thanks
I think the intro part of Pat Benatar's "Hit Me with Your Best Shot" could be a great example to syncopation.
Keep up the good work 👍🏻
A Grace note is also another small amount of time that COULD be notated by a 32nd, 64th or 128th but as you said, it might be indistinguishable from the previously mentioned times depending upon the meter of the song.
Good Video.
Superb video as always (headphones recommended for this one - or your studio monitor speakers).
18:18 Another case of syncopation would be to have a regular flow of notes (1/8 notes for eg), all the same pitch as basis, and few accented at higher pitch off beats (for eg E B E F E E E F ). Tis is quite common in metal guitar. So it is not the flow of notes which is syncopated, but the pitch accentation in the pattern. 🎸
My favorite is "Tell Me Something Good" by Rufus. I saw sheet music for it when I was younger and I was soooo intimidated.
Que increíble trabajo de parte del traductor al español, no sé si me llegue a leer pero mis felicitaciones
muchisimas gracias aprecio que aprecien el trabajo
I love this channel!
One of your best videos David
When you demonstrated the Pushed Rhythm, I immediately thought of Give It Up by KC and the Sunshine Band.
Also, I think The Model by Kraftwerk uses the Tresillo rhythm.
Great video as always. But such a pity that there wasn't any ska beat example. If there's a typical example of syncopated offbeat, it's this music, isn't it?
And reggae too, this was exactly my first thought before watching.
You've got a good point here. Keep it up!
@@brendanm6921 You are totally right, mate. So let's hope for an exclusive Ska, Rocksteady and Reggae Special on this channel! 😎
The great syncopated song of my youth was "Cecelia" by Simon and Garfunkel.
Syncopation is of course one of the main ingredients in jazz. I´d recommend checking out someone like Thelonius Monk, a true master of syncopation.
Amazing. I'm learning proper rhythm guitar and absorbing all this information. Great video
Thank you for using your own music in the examples! I'm gonna go listen to your music now :}
Great!! Thank you
Very interesting video, but I feel it was lacking in a couple areas, like there's maybe too much attention paid to syncopated melodies and not enough attention paid to syncopated percussion, which is central to a lot of genres of music. Also, this might not be your area of expertise, but I feel like no video on syncopation is really complete without a discussion of hip-hop and the unique ways in which that genre employs syncopated percussion.
I was literally learning about syncopation in chorus class today!
absolutely amazing ❤❤❤
Got to say That was a 4D chess move to promote your album!
You Got me intrigued! I'll definitely check it out😊
Also I would like to hear your process of making an album, how long did it take, any challenges you faced
16:30 -- to be fair to musescore, there is a command to have the program standardize the notation to, for example, draw the tie across the the mid-bar.
Would love a video (or videos) with a more in-depth look at ska and other off-beat genres/songs.
Love love absolutely LOVE!
One song that immediately comes to mind for me is "Linus and Lucy" by the Vince Guaraldi Trio - from Peanuts. The syncopation in both the left hand bass and the right hand melody make this song nearly impossible for me to play
Great example!
Joe Walsh used "Cast Your Fate to the Wind" in a medley and it was (arguably) better than Vince's original. But I've never heard a cover of "Linus and Lucy" that was nearly as good as the original. Vince Guaraldi was a master of nuance.
That's a great tune.
Always brilliant. Thank you.
Thank you too!
mate i loved this so much thank you, so god damn blood informative!
So the definition from my old band was right, thank you
As a DJ, like most, have been doing this by combining 2 tracks and off setting one with the other to achieve the effect.
Never occurred to me before that "Free Fallin" is essentially just one three-minute long F major chord, with its third being variably suspended at the fourth, suspended at the second, or resolved. That's all the song is, harmonically, from go to whoa. When the bass comes in, it sort of recontextualises Fsus4 as Bbsus2, and Fsus2 as Csus4, but they're still the same chords. A master class in how to do a lot with incredibly little.
Syncopation is the best thing to get your feet dancing* Fantastic video
Yes! Thank you!
Aw man you should have included the main riff in enter sandman.. that’s my go to when I think about anticipating the beat
I am playing a Bulgarian dance in the irregular 7/8 rhythm, and I found it tricky to play the syncopation between two adjacent bars. The score for this dance is in the description of my video Dobrudzanska Rachenitsa (my latest video on my channel, grigpit). The legato occurs between the last note of bar 62 and the first note of bar 63.
I think quarter note syncopation can be recognized and legitimized as such when used in a context that breaks from the normal mold or cadence of a song. So if the rhythm of a song makes you anticipate the next note to be on beat 1 but the next note comes on beat 2 to continue or repeat the melody.
“The” syncopated song is Birdland by Weather Report.
There’s a Stevie Wonder song that has a bass line with an incredible syncopation throughout . I can’t think of the name now though.
I think that reputedly the first disco song, Gloria Gaynor's Never Can Say Goodbye, has a dominant syncopated hi hat right through. Alan Schwarchenberg on drums, session great.
3:48: Give It Up (KC & The Sunshine Band).
My thoughts exactly
Dear Mr BENNETT - you are an effective Music Educator. Wonderful. SYNCOPATION is a complex thing, yet so necessary in many works. DEZZ SG Jan28, 2025
Minimal Techno uses syncopation to give it a groove usually supplied on the hihats , shakers and toms. The use swing on the bass and is what makes it nice to dance too.
Honestly was expecting "Fox on the Run" when you introduced pushed rhythm
I would have added the fact that syncopation not only happens during a weak beat, but it also extend towards a strong beat.
So, if you have a note that is happening on the second eight note of your first quarter note, and it last a whole quarter note, so it starts in a weak beat, goes through a strong beat and ends in a weak beat, that kind of thing, that would be a syncopated note that extends towards a strong beat.
I think this is important because I think it's what tells it appart from a backbeat. I'm not sure if that's how it works in English language music theory too...
Myxomatosis, but not the much disputed syncopation in Videotape?? Maybe Videotape could have it's own video? I'd really like to hear what you have to say about it.
Thanks David
Kokomo by Gene and Eunice uses the tresillo rhythm. Kokomo was covered extensively at the time and perhaps embedded tresillo in 50"s rocknroll and doowop, eg the door wop classic Little Darling
I don't understand why 16th note syncopation is more extreme based on the syncopated note being further "off the grid" than an 8th note. Because the 16th note is only further away from the strong beat of the bar when you choose the 4th 16th note of the bar. If you choose the 2nd 16th note, it would be closer. But even in the case of of the 4th 16th note, it's still closer to the 'grid' because it's closer to the strong beat of the next bar.
I can feel what you're saying when I listen to the music, but is it possible to do 16th note syncopation in a different way that it feels less extreme, or would that just not sound good?
Syncopation is 'Tell me that you love me' by Chaka Khan & Rufus (first song on Chaka Khan's Tiny Desk concert).
The drums to A Devil Among The Tailors by At The Drive-in was what immediately came to mind with the Tresillo rhythm. And I the syncopation of the chorus of Hard to Handle by Otis Redding is why I like it so much, and why I really don't like the Black Crowes cover, they basically unsyncopated the vocals.
Much of Elton’s piano playing in his earlier music literally abounds with syncopation. Before I understood music I used to call it stumbling as he would hold back and catch up as he played. A good example would be Madman Across the Water or even better Country Comfort.
8:39 - Meshuggah: hold my beer!
with the Radiohead section I am surprised Videotape wasn't mentioned with its piano being desynced from everything else, though I do note it is very subtle and there are other more outward cases of syncopation to talk about (like Myxomatosis, which did get discussed)
In the beginning of jazz, there is a stumble on the third beat of a 4/4 time tune. I forget the term that's used to describe it but it steps away from the tight time of a marching band. And was quoted as the beginning of jazz music. Credited to a trumpet player bolan?
Great video!
Glad you enjoyed it ☺️
The Boston Pops Orchestra does a nice version of “The Syncopated Clock”. Whenever someone mentions syncopation, that is what I hear in my head.
this is great!
Whats the difference between push and pull? Is it like rushing or dragging?
Hi, @DavidBennetPiano . I think, syncopation in songs happens more often to meet the stress of the word sung on the particular notesand the flow of the lyrics, like the example of your own song demonstrates (the word "word" in this case). English with it's relativly short words and simple stressing doesn't make it quite obvious, but languages with more longer words (three syllables and up), like German, or more complex stressing , like French, demonstrates my point better, I think.
Kind of odd but I always watch you videos at 2x speed for the content. See you again at the artificial higher tempo I really do prefer as it makes it very swingy sounding. I get it's not the direction of the song but I think there's so much energy potential there
Transcribing many of my song's rhythms is hard due to instinctive syncopation that I seemed to have picked up somewhere; the way I play them never quite matches how they sound when played from the transcriptions. I often end up writing weird 16th or 32nd offsets to get them to match more closely.
Soooo interesting ✨👌
Shake hands with beef by Primus comes to mind when thinking of syncopated riffs
Always loved me some syncopation!
Most of "Ambrosia's" songs are syncopated. Give them a listen." Life beyond L.A." is a good example. Thanks David.
Funny enough, that tresillo rhythm pops up a lot in electronic music as well. It’s pretty much instant groove, especially with the kick ducking out some parts to emphasize the syncopation.
And well, I think it pops up a lot in other places because I think that dotted quarter or dotted eighth gives that drive while still keeping in the grid (you could also apply with polymeters with the constant dotted quarters or eighths, but it’s up to you on how long you’ll play them).
Tresillos and double tresillos played on their own still have that drive and tricks you to thinking it’s speeding up, but when placed against a simple pulse, it can turn them into a groove. I wouldn’t say they’re a cliché, but given how prevalent it is, they might as well be (and a catchy one, at that).
Yes, I think The Model by Kraftwerk is an example of tresillo.
@@cakemartyr5794
From what I’m listening, I think it’s the arpeggiated synth part. Idk if I could count it as a tresillo rhythm, but maybe so given the 3-3-2.
@@GBRen-xc2ow OK. I'm approaching this academically but the sheet music I have of The Model shows the rhythm in exactly the same way that David shows tresillo.