Groove is defined as the tendency to move some part of your body according to some aspectof the sound pattern - a phenomenon that has attracted considerable interest in musicpsychology and cognition. Syncopation and a steady beat are two properties consistentlyassociated with groove, but this constitutes an apparent contradiction: Syncopes would seemto counter a steady beat and confuse the perceived regular pulse. It has been proposed thatsyncopes reinforce the pulse, as representing faster metrical levels. The purpose of thepresent study was to examine if there is a level of syncopation that induces more groove, asopposed to having all metrical levels manifest. To this end pseudo-musical patterns withseveral levels were presented with varying proportions of the sounds randomly missing, ineffect creating random syncopes. Participants tried to synchronize with the beat and ratedtheir experience of groove after each sequence. The results show that the stimuli without anysyncopation both led to higher synchronization accuracy and higher ratings of groove andliking. The results are discussed with respect to Predictive Coding, a theory for the perceptionof complex stimuli.Keywords: groove, syncopation, predictive coding, tapping experiment, music