Rhythm

Grade 7 Music Theory - Rhythm in Score Reading Questions

Syncopation
In un-syncopated music, the longer notes fall on the stronger beats of the bar. For example, in 12/8, one beat is worth
one dotted crotchet (dotted quarter note), and there are four of them in each bar. So an un-syncopated rhythm could

look like this:

In syncopated music, the longer notes are displaced onto a weaker part of the bar, i.e. somewhere not falling on the
beat. I’ve rewritten the above rhythm using the same lengths of notes, but pushed forward by a crotchet (quarter note).

Now the longer notes fall on the off beats, and the rhythm is syncopated.

To find out whether a section of music is syncopated or not, first you need to look at the time signature and work out
where the strong beats fall. Then decide whether the longer note values in the rhythm are aligned with the main beats.

If they are not, then the music is syncopated.

In this example, both bars contain syncopation, in different ways:

In the first bar, the quaver (eighth note) A falls on a weaker beat than the semiquavers (16th notes) either side of it. In

the second bar, the tied Bs create a note worth ¾ of a beat, but this note falls just before beat 2, (which is the second
strongest beat of the bar in 2/4).
Alternative Rhythms
Some rhythms can be written in more than one way, with the same aural effect. For example, in compound time

signatures, a duplet can be written as two dotted notes. These two rhythms are identical: