The evolution of syncopation in twentieth-century American popular music

Abstract

Several studies have found increases in syncopation within genres of twentieth-century popular music, but its evolution across the entire century has not been explored. In this study we use a new corpus of vocal melodies to examine trends in the use of syncopation. We find an increasing trend over the entire century. We also consider three ways of categorising syncopations into ‘strong’ and ‘weak’ forms, and find that the strong forms increase more rapidly and later in the century than the weak forms. We consider the implications of these trends and discuss further issues that are illuminated by our corpus.