syncopate

Most of the songs vamp through a handful of chords as Keys gives her voice room to leap, to curl, to muse, to syncopate; she has rarely sounded so jazzy and improvisatory.

From New York Times ● Dec. 10, 2021

Not many, but enough to start infecting celebrations with doubt, to break up the exact time, the exact place, to syncopate something that used to be whole.

From The New Yorker ● Nov. 2, 2019

During a show-pausing turn in “Mary Poppins Returns,” Lin-Manuel Miranda takes center stage to sing and syncopate, and the movie flickers to life.

From New York Times ● Dec. 18, 2018

From 1935 the itch to complicate and syncopate gets to him.

From Slate ● Dec. 18, 2010

Syncopate a square column, and leave an adhesive salve; syncopate the salve, and leave a person found in a bindery; syncopate again, and leave a prayer.

From St. Nicholas Magazine for Boys and Girls, Vol. 5, July 1878, No. 9 by Mary Mapes Dodge

“The way that he syncopates and phrases, if it’s not codified, then he escapes a dialogue about jazz piano history.”

From Washington Post ● Sep. 30, 2022

Langston syncopates his verbal abstractions in double time and then triple time, delivering conundrums like: “Creative manners to skip and erase from moment to moment/abstract, realist, most problematic version of futurism.”

From New York Times ● Jun. 17, 2022

A lovely painting that syncopates rectangles of black, red and teal hangs here next to a larger weaving with the same geometric arrangement.

From New York Times ● Nov. 26, 2021

He retains the MacNooder eloquence and syncopates it, polishing his quips for quotation, studying his audience.

From Time Magazine Archive

The theme again is "America" but it is mournful and bleeding now until the third movement, "1926," takes it up again and syncopates it.

From Time Magazine Archive

Driven by rolling log drums, syncopated rhythms and infectious melodies, amapiano and other electronic sounds from across the African diaspora are finding new audiences in a city celebrated for its musical heritage.

From BBC ● Oct. 24, 2026

The spikier “Tongue” is the other rocker, whose arrangement is a blend of syncopated drum breaks, squelching keyboards and drones built on feedback and distortion.

From The Wall Street Journal ● Oct. 13, 2026

At the end of the show, a stunning reading of “Si Antes Te Hubiera Conocido” revealed the instinctive ease with which she can navigate the sweet, syncopated phrasing of Dominican merengue.

From Los Angeles Times ● Aug. 16, 2026

In court, Sheeran's team accepted that the two songs share a similar syncopated chord pattern.

From BBC ● Jun. 17, 2025

Notice that the syncopated notes in the melody come on the second and fourth quarters of the beat, essentially alternating with the strong eighth-note pattern laid down in the accompaniment.

From "Understanding Basic Music Theory" by Catherine Schmidt-Jones and Russel Jones

The song is a masterclass in production, pulling and syncopating a sample from iconic dance hall tune “Coolie Dance Riddim,” released by Jamaican producer Cordel Skatta Burrell in 2003.

From Los Angeles Times ● Sep. 21, 2026

A student of Karlheinz Stockhausen, Eotvos composed “Angels” with speech morphing into song, syncopating percussion and electronic keyboards.

From Washington Times ● Jun. 9, 2017

Faced with Minnie Riperton’s kitschy, overblown “Give Me Time,” he comes up with a beautifully elliptical response, alternately swooning and syncopating, injecting a full minute of genuine pathos.

From Slate ● Dec. 22, 2016

Ragtime, the new music invented by black musicians, was shaking up the straightforward rhythms of the previous century and syncopating them irresistibly.

From The New Yorker ● Feb. 16, 2015

It presented itself to him as a picture—legs moving against the walls of buildings, diagonals of bodies, syncopating face lines.

From Erik Dorn by Ben Hecht