Hey guys, check out the syncopated rhythm pattern I practiced today with one of my beatbox students. You can practice it together with the audio file. Download it for free in this post!
A syncopation means combining a weak sound with a strong one, for example shifting the accent from “one” to “and”. If you want to do it, just shorten the accented note and make the unaccented one longer. Syncopation means shifting a chosen note by a specified rhythmic value. In this case, the [Pf] snare has been moved forward by an eighth note. Theoretically, it should fall on ‘two’ and ‘four’, but it falls on ‘two-and’ (first bar) and ‘four-and’ (second bar).
Here is a simple example:
You can also download an audio file (3 min, 5 mb), which is a looped version of this syncopated rhythm pattern.
Syncopation is very popular in African drum music, where the shifts are so little (but clear nonetheless), that a specific term ‘microtiming’ had to be coined. It’s also characteristic for jazz, in which case the shifts within a phrase change the entire song pulse. That’s what we call ‘swing’.
Learn more about syncopation from my beatbox e‑book!
All the quotations in this post come from my book “Human Beatbox — Personal Instrument” that you can download here for whatever you pay — it’s a free donation!
Download the beatbox e‑book manual!
Should I make more tutorials like this? Please let me know in the comments!