Syncopation - the key to groovy rhythms

hey everyone this is oscar from underdog and today let's talk about syncopation what is it and why do you need it in your life okay let's start with an example so you know immediately what we're talking about right what i'm going to do is i'm going to show you a straight groove with no syncopation then i'm going to show you an example of us adding an element that's not syncopated and then i'm going to show you an example of us adding an element that is syncopated so let's have a look at that let's start with a drum groove a drum rhythm that has pretty much no syncopation like this it's not a bad groove i'm pretty happy with this but it doesn't pull you in any particular rhythmical directions it is basically a version of boom skits if you want to give a rhythm like that some love watch last week's video about techno minimalism however let's say you want to program some more instruments over this straight groove where are you going to place the new elements and where are you going to place the accents imagine i add a few little hits of an acid 303 synthesizer and if i add them like this it's a bad example right you might realize intuitively that these acid notes are not actually contributing much to the rhythm because they are stressing beats that are already very stressed instead let's add a syncopated rhythm instead quite simply we replace this pattern with something like this and see how it blends in with the straight groove in a way that pulls in a more interesting way okay remember we're listening to the rhythm and the timing of this track not so much the sound design so what do we just do i showed you a straight groove then i showed you an example of a not very syncopated element and then i showed you a counter example of a syncopated element so the pattern of these two acid lines was different and one was more rhythmically interesting than the other but why well the answer is syncopation and so what is syncopation well syncopation is the stressing of weak beats in your song it's a simple enough definition but let's dig into it to really understand the implications and what that means we made a little poster about this as well just like last week this is my brother billy helping me out love you dude he's helping me make these diagrams that you can print off at home so you can have them on your wall ready to go whenever you want there's a download link in the description okay let's talk about terminology first when people talk about rhythm theory like the rhythm part of music theory let's say there are a few different words and a few different vocabulary sets that come up when you research this stuff and to be honest i don't find any of them completely satisfying for when i'm doing electronic music so you're gonna have to forgive me here today for using a little bit my own vocabulary because that's how i've learned myself over the years this might not be exactly what you've learned in like classical music school okay so i want to propose a system that matches the head nodding okay when you count rhythm in electronic music or in techno or whatever right notice where your head is naturally trying to nod right and that i'm going to call those moments the downbeats and the upbeats i know there are a few different interpretations of what those words mean in different sets of music theory but i guess this is closest to the idea of like in reggae where you have the upbeat right where the upbeat is strummed on the guitar not the downbeat it's kind of the similar idea so every time the kick happens in a typical boons boom ticket right right your head goes down and so those moments are the down beats and in between each downbeats there is the up beat which is usually in this kind of a rhythm marked by a high hat so you go boom boom boom down up down up down up down up right so these are the most important musical moments in your one bar loop but then as you might know in electronic music a lot happens at the level of the 1 16th note and so if you open up a one bar loop in ableton very often what you'll do is you'll set your grid size to 116 because a lot of interesting stuff happens at that level so imagine in a one bar loop we have 16 moments that we have to give a name to we've already named eight of those moments so there's the down up down up down up down up then there's eight more moments in between those that i'm going to call the weak sixteenth notes so in my mind when i'm doing rhythm i think of the downbeats the upbeats and the weak sixteenths in between and if you're willing to follow me on that terminology the next step is to talk about the relative strength of each of these beats so when we're counting the the beats that i'm that i was just describing boom right the boom is obviously in my mind obviously the strongest beats maybe the first one is even more strong than the others but let's call those four places where those kick drums are let's call those the strongest beats then the next level of hierarchy i would say is the place where the hi-hat sits so so let's say that the hi-hats still have some emphasis to them but it's slightly less emphasis than the kick drums so on the strongest level you've got the downbeats on the next level you've got the upbeats and then the weakest beats in this loop they're so weak that i don't even pronounce them usually are the week 16s those little moments are so weak that i don't even pronounce them but they're there they exist in your daw those moments exist so if you draw up a hierarchy of the strength of the relative beats in this type of beat you'll get something like this now it's important to note that i am actually describing moments in time not particular drum hits i know i'm using the kick drum and the hi-hat as an example for this however even if one of these kicks is muted that moment in time remains a downbeat your head is still going to nod even if that kick is muted so these moments are abstract moments they're not synonymous to a particular drum however of course there are some conventions or some cliches almost you could call them for example that the downbeat is most often marked by a kick drum or that the upbeat is most often marked by a hi-hat but those two things are similar but not the same and the nuance is important cool so my very basic beat that i've created goes very simple the kick drums are obviously mixed to be the loudest and most impactful the hi-hats are mixed to be slightly less impactful but still very present and then in between there's still some things filling up those weak sixteenth notes but at a less priority level than all the others this results in a very straight groove that's absolutely fine but has no syncopation in it so then what was syncopation well syncopation is when you take one of these weaker beats and you promote it to be more strong so for example you could take one of the hi-hats or one of the week 16 and bump it up a level and say this is now considered a stronger beat we're going to emphasize it and emphasizing a beat only means playing an instrument on it or playing that instrument louder at that moment literally anything to make that moment jump out in the composition so if you look again at our acid synthesizer one that has no syncopation you can see that it's programmed to fall on the strongest beats that are already strong we are not adding any interesting groove or any interesting rhythmical information to our loop because these moments are already accented so why would we put more synthesizers on them right it doesn't add any dance ability doesn't have any tension to your groove instead the alternate example which quite simply just places them on an upbeat and a weak sixteenth it immediately creates something that pulls a little bit against the main rhythm it provides a second layer a layer of groove a layer of groovy tension let's say it creates a more interesting feeling for us to dance to and in my mind that's what we're going for here we want a physical response to the music if any of this is too advanced by the way check out my foundations of electronic music course it goes from absolute beginner to intermediate level producer the concept of syncopation also helps explain why things like polymeters and euclidean rhythms almost always adds some kind of satisfying groove to a straight beat because they have a tendency to naturally fall on weak beats and therefore provide a counter tension to the straight groove now an important word of caution here right when you start to think about building in complexity and adding complexity to your beats remember to zoom out from your production in your brain and to listen like an audience member would and to try dancing to your own music and check always that you can simply nod along to the music with your head and so that the syncopation doesn't overtake the straight groove to the point where it's not clear how people should be moving to your music the idea is not to overwhelm people with just random hits on all the weak beats you probably want to create a sort of a macro level groove where the global groove of your track all follows one rhythm that has some syncopation in it so for instance if you decide to prioritize a particular upbeat or something consider that maybe several instruments might accent the same upbeat so that the global story stays consistent now take this concept of syncopation put it in your little tool belt implemented in your daw no matter what daw you're using come show us on the discord channel what you did with this follow my own music project torque and face the sun on soundcloud and instagram like i said earlier there's a foundations of electronic music course if any of this went too fast for you or you want to learn in a more structured manner download the poster for this in the link below and until next time stay producing be good to one another and take [Music] you

Channel: Underdog Electronic Music School

Views: 94,058

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Id: Drs_uqFG-to

Length: 10min 39sec (639 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 18 2022