Wednesday, November 08, 2017

Rock in 5/8 - 01

5/8 and 5/4 are good meters to practice to if you want to improve your concentration, and disrupt playing habits. Five-note patterns in general, too. For many years my playing was extremely 3 oriented; whatever meter I was playing in, I would have a strong tendency to go into 3/4 (with a strong dotted quarter note pull) when improvising. That's a legit creative thing, but it was also a habit. If you lean too much on that Elvin-type thing, or if you have the opposite problem and are too rhythmically squared-off in the way you play in 4, practicing in 5 can help open things up for other things to happen, while improving your awareness of what you're playing.

To that end— and for actually playing in 5— here we have some basic rock patterns in 5/8, and the same pattern played twice metered in 5/4, with a quarter note pulse:




The accents are for the hihat; play the snare drum basically at an even volume. Try counting out loud when playing the pattern in 5/4— numbers only: “1 2 3 4 5”

Since our end goal is to have this affect the way we play in 4/4 as well as 5, see also this page— it will help you integrate these ideas into 4. Also hit the 5/4 label at the bottom of the post to get much more in 5. My old series Cracking 5/4 will be especially helpful if you're new to this subject.

Get the pdf

No comments: