From the course: Beginning Acoustic Guitar Music Lessons

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Rocking out with syncopation

Rocking out with syncopation

- And now for Rocking Out with Syncopation. Syncopated rhythms are slightly more off beat than the traditional playing along right with the pulse. Usually it's more on the up beats and sounds a little more funky. So often that uses something called a tie. So a tie is when two notes are connected, and you only play the first note and you hold it out for the duration of the second note. And this allows you to play more syncopated rhythms, such as this next example. So let's check out how you'd play this. You're gonna hold down the G chord and you strum on the quarter note, and then you're gonna strum two eighth notes, down, up, and then that eighth note that you just played the up stroke on is tied over to the next eighth note. So you're gonna miss on the down stroke and then continue playing the last three eighth notes, up down up, and it sounds like this, check it out. One, two, three, four. (strumming)

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