Syncopation (disambiguation)

Last updated February 26, 2019

Syncopation is a musical term for the stressing of a normally unstressed beat in a bar or the failure to sound a tone on an accented beat. It may also refer to:

In music, syncopation involves a variety of rhythms which are in some way unexpected, making part or all of a tune or piece of music off-beat. More simply, syncopation is "a disturbance or interruption of the regular flow of rhythm": a "placement of rhythmic stresses or accents where they wouldn't normally occur." It is the correlation of at least two sets of time intervals.

Syncopation (dance), dancing on unstressed beats, or improvised steps
Syncopation (1929 film), early American musical
Syncopation (1942 film), American musical
Syncopation in algebra, a way of writing algebra that is not rhetorical, but also not fully symbolic
"Syncopation", a song by Billy Ocean on the 1984 album Suddenly
"Syncopation", a song by Babymetal on the 2016 album Metal Resistance
"Syncopation", a 1926 violin and piano piece by Fritz Kreisler

The terms syncopation and syncopated step in dancing are used in two senses:

The first definition matches the musical term: stepping on an unstressed beat. For example, ballroom Cha cha is a syncopated dance in this sense, because the basic step "breaks on two". When dancing to the disparate threads contained within the music, hands, torso, and head can independently move in relation to a thread, creating a fluidly syncopated performance of the music.
The word "syncopation" is often used by dance teachers to mean improvised or rehearsed execution of step patterns that have more rhythmical nuances than "standard" step patterns. It takes advanced dancing skill to dance syncopations in this sense. Advanced dancing of West Coast Swing and the Lindy Hop makes heavy use of "syncopation" in this sense.

Syncopation is a 1929 American musical film directed by Bert Glennon and starring Barbara Bennett, Bobby Watson, and Ian Hunter, although top billing went to Fred Waring and his Pennsylvanians.

Syncopation is a 1942 American film from RKO directed by William Dieterle and starring Adolphe Menjou, Jackie Cooper, and Bonita Granville. It is set during the early days of jazz. It is also known as The Band Played On.

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Ragtime – also spelled rag-time or rag time – is a musical style that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1895 and 1918. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or "ragged" rhythm.

Salsa is a popular form of social dance originating from Cuban folk dances. The movements of Salsa are a combination of the Afro-Cuban dances, Son, cha-cha-cha, Mambo, Rumba, and the Danzón. The dance, along with salsa music, saw major development in the mid-1970s in New York. Different regions of Latin America and the United States have distinct salsa styles of their own, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican, Cali Colombia, L.A. and New York styles. Salsa dance socials are commonly held in night clubs, bars, ballrooms, restaurants, and outside, especially when part of an outdoor festival.

In music and music theory, the beat is the basic unit of time, the pulse, of the mensural level. The beat is often defined as the rhythm listeners would tap their toes to when listening to a piece of music, or the numbers a musician counts while performing, though in practice this may be technically incorrect. In popular use, beat can refer to a variety of related concepts including: pulse, tempo, meter, specific rhythms, and groove.

Lambada is a dance from Pará, Brazil. The dance became internationally popular in the 1980s, especially in the Philippines, Latin America and Caribbean countries. It has adopted aspects of dances such as forró, salsa, merengue, maxixe and the carimbó.

In latin dancing, the jive is a dance style that originated in the United States from African-Americans in the early 1930s. It was popularized in 1934 by Cab Calloway. It is a lively and uninhibited variation of the Jitterbug, a form of Swing dance. Glenn Miller introduced his own jive dance in 1938 with the song "Doin' the Jive" which never caught on.

Offbeat, originally a music term meaning "not following the standard beat", which has also become a general synonym for "unconventional" or "unusual", may refer to:

The morna is a music and dance genre from Cape Verde.

"I Got Rhythm" is a piece composed by George Gershwin with lyrics by Ira Gershwin and published in 1930, which became a jazz standard. Its chord progression, known as the "rhythm changes", is the foundation for many other popular jazz tunes such as Charlie Parker's and Dizzy Gillespie's bebop standard "Anthropology ".

The coladeira is a music genre from Cape Verde.

Syncope may refer to:

Big beat is an electronic music genre that usually uses heavy breakbeats and synthesizer-generated loops and patterns – common to acid house/techno. The term has been used by the British music industry to describe music by artists such as The Prodigy, The Chemical Brothers, Fatboy Slim, The Crystal Method, Propellerheads, Cut La Roc, Basement Jaxx and Groove Armada.

Bachata is a style of social dance from the Dominican Republic which is now danced all over the world. It is associated with bachata music.

"They Didn't Believe Me" is a song with music by Jerome Kern and lyrics by Herbert Reynolds.

"Lotus Flower" is a song by the English rock band Radiohead, released on their eighth studio album, The King of Limbs (2011). It features singer Thom Yorke's falsetto over syncopated beats and a synthesiser bassline. Its music video, featuring Yorke's erratic dancing, attracted millions of views and spawned an internet meme.

Turning the beat around, abbreviated as TBA in some music textbooks, is a form of temporary tactus or pulse (music) in popular electronic music and electronic dance music. This includes forms of syncopation that issue a challenge to dancers to find the downbeat. In this terminology a "reverse TBA," involves the explicit contradiction of a previously established pulse. The term is to be distinguished from downtempo.

Blue Skies is a studio album of phonograph records by Bing Crosby and Fred Astaire released in 1946 featuring songs that were presented in the American musical film Blue Skies. Like Song Hits from Holiday Inn, the entire 78 rpm album would be composed of Irving Berlin songs written specifically for the film. This was the first release of one of Astaire's greatest songs, "Puttin' On the Ritz", on shellac disc record.

The Beat: Go-Go's Fusion of Funk and Hip-Hop is a 2001 book written by Kip Lornell and Charles C. Stephenson, Jr. In 2009, an updated second edition of the book was published and retitled The Beat! Go-Go Music from Washington, D.C.

Syncopation (disambiguation)

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