the.com/syncopation
Music lying about where the beat is, and you believing it.
means The musical trick of accenting a note where you don't expect it — off the main beat — so the rhythm feels like it's stumbling forward with a wink.
from From Greek 'synkope,' a cutting-short or swooning collapse — the same root that gives medicine 'syncope,' a fainting spell. The sense traveled through Latin grammar first, where 'syncope' meant dropping a sound or syllable from the middle of a word (think 'fo'c'sle' for 'forecastle'). Music borrowed the idea around the Renaissance: a beat you'd expect gets 'cut out' or displaced, and the rhythm seems to swoon off its axis before catching itself again.
- definition
- Stress falls where you do not expect it
- origin word
- Greek for cut short, syn plus koptein
- everywhere in
- Jazz, funk, reggae, ragtime, your foot tapping
- brain trick
- Makes silence feel louder than the note