syncopation in music and management
I was teaching a music appreciation course this morning, and we found ourselves talking about syncopation. Syncopation in music is a delightful, playful rhythmic effect where a note is emphasized by being played “off the beat.” It’s kind of a springboard effect: the diving board went down “on the beat” and now bounds up after the beat. The note that gets its pizzazz launching from the rebounding board is described as “syncopated.”
But just being “off the beat” doesn’t itself make a note syncopated; there has to be some emphasis on the note that is caused by its spring-like relationship to the beat. There are plenty of ways to play notes between beats so that they aren’t syncopated.
One interesting aspect of syncopation is that the effect requires a beat in order to exist, even though the syncopated note is necessarily not sounding together with the beat. No beat, no syncopation. Now the beat can be overt, as with an accompanying drumset, or it can be implied, something constructed real-time in the mind of the listener by imagining what beat could be present, given all the other notes. But if there is only rhythmic mush, with no beat either overt or implied, then there is no possibility for syncopation. There may be emphasis, accent, but it would not be the special kind of emphasis that draws its power from the surrounding structure by being playfully off.
And this brought me to consider adapting these concepts to management, specifically to a couple types of problematic management:
If there is a structure but no room for difference then syncopation will be absent. Having everything happening on the same beat removes the opportunity for the special enhancement of an idea that bounces up off the beat.
But equally stifling is management without a structuring beat, either an overt one with clear and consistent stated policies and procedures, or an implied structure that organizational members can construct and understand themselves by observing all the notes. Without any beat, there is no way to syncopate, to express the positive and playful energy that can be generated by being off the beat.
May 27th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
Interesting thoughts on syncopation. Usually, I tell my musicians to “accent the rest” –hit the silence just as hard as you hit the notes.
Regarding the first point: You can’t tell that you’re syncopating if you can’t tell that you’re “playing in the holes” between the beats. As when, for example, there just isn’t any air between the notes (e.g, Bach’s running 16ths). Or in other words, I can’t syncopate until you shut up for a moment–because just a moment is all you need.
Another way of looking at your second point, the management problem: One of my mentors says, “How can you know that you’ve gotten what you wanted if you don’t know what you want?”