Has anyone got any ideas for teaching a beginning student syncopation? I am not sure if it is even too early for syncopation but we have come to this point with the method book and I notice both grade 1 and jazz 1 have pieces using syncopation anyhow. So far I have tried

beating a steady beat with left hand whilst playing tricky rhythm in right
playing a steady crochet with left whilst playing right
getting the student to echo my clapping
asking the student to come in on the off beat in an improvisation

I am sure when the child goes home it will all unravel but I am short of ideas for next week if it does.

Thanks

Isn't it a horror! I really struggle to get pupils to even play a dotted rhythm. Even if you tell them to think skipping, they go all even on me. Having danced for the best part of 25 years, I always found it really easy, so I'm waiting with interest to see what suggestions come up.

Dotted crotchet+ quaver = Bob - the builder etc ( Can he fix it?)
Syncopated = We are the champions
Walk round (steady pulse!) singing/chanting the words (in rhythm) . Then apply to instrument.

wow theyre good ones!

My daughter's cello teacher said that it was pointless trying to explain syncopation to young children (and my daughter was nine so two years older than your pupil). Instead she said my daughter should listen to the CD of the piece over and over again during her first practice session after the lesson and not even attempt to play it. Then at every other practice she should listen then sing along with the CD and finally play it.

I was a bit sceptical but this did actually work. What I found even more surprising is that my daughter now recognises the rhythms when she sees them in other pieces and says "oh that's like in ..." and can play them more or less correctly by thinking back to what she learnt previously (rather than by any rational analysis).

I tend to use silly phrases to help them understand the feel of the rhythm......

I guess that's a case of learning a bit like we learn to speak as children - the whole mother tongue method thing.

This is one of the times to think: sound before symbol. Seven years old isn't too young to understand syncopation - no way! - but only if you sing it first. Walk into any (good) primary school and you'll hear a whole hall full of 5-year-olds singing a syncopated calypso - if anything I think little kids find syncopated rhythms easier to sing than straight rhythms.

So get or make a backing track to the tune you want her to learn, and sing the tune together till she knows it backwards. Then she'll find it the melody to play, and if you show her how it looks on the printed page she'll begin to understand how syncopated notation works too.

I've got some quite young kids playing the Titanic theme (groan I know, but they love it) and when they get to the syncopated bit in the 3rd line they always play it correctly whether they truly understand the notation or not because they know how it's supposed to go.

When in doubt, always sing!

Definitely put words to it - mine usually involve chocolate

But walking / clapping rhythms is always a good idea too.

Je-lleee and ice cream!

Dotted rhythm = Weeeeeeeeetabix!

Not syncopation, came across the following to illustrate the feel of different time sigs:

A rusty, spidery, copper-plated antiquarian door. I.e. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5.

I think I missed something - I don't get it

Each word has a different number of syllables .

Ahhhhhhhhhh

Sorry, being dense.....