About This Book

(From Syncopation Exploration, Book 1, p.5)

This book is made of various Explorations. These are short chapters filled with piano pieces and approaches that will help you learn to feel syncopated rhythms in your body. The pieces are geared toward pianists at an intermediate level or above. The directions are given in each Exploration. First, a few general comments:

Moving the Whole Body

Perhaps the best way to learn to feel rhythms is to move your whole body in rhythmic motions. There are many ways to do this, and some (such as Dalcroze ) are widely known and respected. I encourage you (both students and teachers) to explore these approaches. I have kept the focus of this book mostly on keyboard activities.

Where’s the Counting?

“One and two and three and four and.” Counting aloud can be quite a useful tool. It is also a way of effectively communicating with other musicians. For example, I might say to my duet partner, “Can you accent the ‘and of 2’ in these measures?” However, I don’t use the technique of counting aloud in this first book. Why?

The focus here is on learning to deeply feel syncopated rhythms in your body. Being able to feel a variety of rhythms in the body is the foundation of rhythmic ability. This ability is developed quickly and musically by repeating the same syncopated rhythm over and over while strongly feeling the underlying beat.

Once the feeling for rhythm is established in the body, then learning to count aloud can be more useful. It can then help develop rhythmic movements rather than stunt them. So, I don’t focus on counting aloud at this level because I don’t want to take the focus away from feeling.

Heel Tapping

In classical music, tapping one’s foot is generally frowned upon. The sound and sight of it can distract from the music, especially when playing quiet pieces. However, in jazz training and other traditions, foot tapping is encouraged. This is because our hands are playing off the beat so often that we need to have a strong feeling for the beat somewhere else in the body.

In general, it works best to use the left foot to feel the beat because we often need the right foot to play the pedal. It’s generally better to tap the heel rather than the toe. This is because the feeling for the beat is much stronger when tapping the heel. We feel the beat throughout our leg, and that feeling reverberates through our entire body.

When tapping, press your left heel into the floor solidly, leave it down for at least half the beat. This way, you will have the most solid sense of the beat, even at the fastest tempo. Though this technique takes time to learn, it will greatly improve your sense of time!

What is in Book 2?

In this book, the LH (left hand) either plays on the beat in a steady rhythm while the RH (right hand) dances around the beat or it plays the same rhythm as the RH. In Book 2, the rhythmic patterns become more complex.