Page o' coordination: 5/8 + 5/8 — 02

More fun with 5/4, gateway to all odd meters. I guess. Getting it together does seem to make the others quite a bit easier. This is our second entry using the 5/8+5/8 construction:

When getting the ostinatos together, don't try to swing the first one, written in 5/8, and do swing the second, written in 5/4. Though this was written to be played with swing 8ths, you can also play them straight; when doing that, you can push the triplets around to make 16th note rhythms, usually “1 e &”. So this exercise:

Would be played like this:

Don't let the typo in the hihat part throw you, there. For variety, you could also play beat 1 like this:

Use this and the other “pages o'” as workouts, playing each exercise at least 4-8 times, continuing to the next one without stopping. Doing the tom moves can extend this considerably, depending on how thorough you want to be with them— it's worth the extra time to do that.

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