Mandolin Technique 6 - Syncopation

[00:00:04][music] [music] >> Hello and welcome to this free mandolin lesson. My name is Mando Mike. This is a technique lesson part of a series I've been doing recently on good technique and in the next few minutes we're going to have a little discussion about syncopation. Everything I talk about in this lesson is included in a free PDF so you don't have to do any of this by ear and once you've done this lesson head over to try the corresponding tune where you can put some of the ideas in this lesson into practice and that is on Charlie Parker's great Yardbird Suite which you heard a bit of at the start of this video.

[00:00:52]Very quickly, what is syncopation? So most of the tunes we play, especially fiddle tunes, Celtic folk, American fiddle tunes on the mandolin, have their strong melody notes fall in what we call on the beat. So in 4/4 that would be beats 1, 2, 3 or 4.

[00:01:07]So think of something like Red Haired Boy.

[00:01:11]>> [music] >> Every single note there that is sort of you would call a melody note or a strong beat there [music] uh there.

[00:01:23]Everything of importance is falling on the beat.

[00:01:26]1 [music] 2 3 and 4.

[00:01:31]Syncopation is where we still have strong notes in the melody but they are taken away from the beat and put on the and or the off beat and that is very common in jazz music. It sort of gives a real swing and a real feel to the music. So if we just take a very quick look at that melody I played at the start of this video.

[00:01:53]You can see if I put the notes up, I have circled all of the notes that in fiddle tune music would probably fall on the beat, but to give it the swing of jazz music, they've been shifted to the and. So, one and two and three and four.

[00:02:07]So, that is very loosely. There's lots of sort of avenues you can go down with syncopation, but it's where a very large percentage of the melody notes are falling off the beat.

[00:02:21]Now, for mandolin players, especially if you did my first lesson in this series on proper pick direction, you will know that we have the rule down on the beat, up off the beat. So, if syncopation is all about moving melody notes from the beat to the offbeat, we know we're going to be playing a lot of upstrokes. So, in this lesson, what we're going to do is we're going to do a few exercises to get that feeling of a high percentage of our notes are just the upstrokes and not the downstrokes.

[00:02:48]That metronome is clicking at 100 bpm.

[00:02:50]First task, let's connect every single pick direction to that metronome. So, if that metronome is clicking every beat, so one and two and three and four and one and two and three and four and let's play that. Let's just do the A string.

[00:03:07]So, now we're playing every single pick direction, down up [music] down up down up down up.

[00:03:14]And every time the metronome clicks, [music] we're hitting a down stroke.

[00:03:23]So, that's every beat. There's no syncopation there. That's just a lot of very similar to a fiddle tune. A lot of fiddle tunes are like that. Now, let's take away all of the downstrokes and just keep the upstrokes. So, we're going to put an upstroke in between every click. So, it would sound like this.

[00:03:37]Two, three, four.

[00:03:41]>> [music] >> And it really helps to ghost the downstroke. If you watch my right hand, >> [music] >> it's still making the down movement.

[00:03:53]So now we are 1 and 2 and 3 and 4 and 1 and 2 and 3 and 4. [music] Now this gets a bit matter after a while so I sort of start losing where you are. So you can maybe try it over a scale so like an A scale.

[00:04:10]>> [music] [music] >> You start so you can almost start to feel that that like bounce in the music just with the metronome going on and two and three. Let's try that little scale again. I'm going just an A scale 0 2 4 5 and then back down. So 3 1 2 3 4.

[00:04:31]>> [music] >> And then let's go back down.

[00:04:38]>> [music] >> So all upstrokes, welcome to syncopation. Now it's very rare that a melody will be just upstrokes. They will be like it's a mixture of downs and ups and the syncopation is that the emphasis falls on the ups rather than the only notes are on ups. So now let's try and a couple of exercises where we have some downstrokes and just adding one downstroke to start with at the on beat one so like this. 3 4 1 and >> [music] >> 1 and 2 1 and and >> [music] >> See if you can do that with me.

[00:05:18]>> [music] >> 1 and 1 and If you get bored of the notes, put a C chord.

[00:05:26]Put anything in your left hand.

[00:05:28]>> [music] >> But it's that 1 and [music] and and Now let's vary the rhythm. Let's do a very common rhythm in sort of shoro Latin samba music and it's this.

[00:05:47]>> [music] >> So, it's putting another down on beat three. One and and three and and one and >> [music] >> down up up down up up down up up down up. This is also in Turkey in the Straw and right hand money this rhythm.

[00:06:08]One and [music] and that it. See how mine If you muted me my right hand would just look like it's counting a beat.

[00:06:15]>> [music] >> I'm ghosting the down strokes. One and and one and and one and [music] and three and I'll count properly. One and and three and and one [music] and and three and Now, let's add Let's start syncopated in the first half of the measure and then just four eighth notes in the second half of the measure so you get this sound. I'm going to move to the D string just so I vary a little bit. So, one, two, three, four.

[00:06:47]>> [music] >> So, it's this and and three and four and and and three and four and >> [music] >> See how that >> [music] >> It sort of starts getting a nice feel to it with that syncopation.

[00:07:08]>> [music] >> And and three and four and and and three and four and and and three and four and >> [music] [music] >> And finally for this lesson, let's add a bit of a long gap. Let's have a beat and a half rest in the middle of the measure.

[00:07:30]So, it's going to sound like this.

[00:07:32]Three, four, one and and and one and and >> [music] >> Look how I ghost these notes in those rests.

[00:07:46]Keep your right hand moving.

[00:07:48]>> [music] [music] >> One and and and one and and and one and and and [music] one and and So, that's just a few exercises and getting that syncopated feeling. It's all about trusting that they are upstrokes. We can get so used to when we're playing just playing fiddle tunes, Celtic folk tunes, that every single phrase basically starts on a downstroke.

[00:08:24]Whereas syncopation, so many phrases actually start on upstrokes and it's so unusual if you're not used to it. So, that's what those exercises are for, just to get you that feeling of feeling phrases starting on upstrokes. I would give you a big suggestion which is go and try uh the Charlie Parker tune Yardbird Suite. It is a difficult tune, I will warn you, uh but it's great fun.

[00:08:44]It's a really cool tune and really works on the mandolin. It's almost like he wrote it for the mandolin instead of the saxophone.

[00:08:50]Uh thank you for watching this lesson. I hope you've enjoyed it. I hope you sort of syncopation starts to make a bit of sense of at least what it is and the technique you would need. We do these lessons every month, so please hit like and subscribe while you're here or head over to mandolinmike.com for all of the other free lessons we've done over the last few years.