The 5-tuplet Swing Theory
With the risk of me sounding too old, back in the early days (1999) when I studied music theory, I fell in love with 5-tuplets, having been much inspired by the album called “Eye of the Beholder” by Chick Corea Elektric Band. In a section in the song called “Trance Dance” they play a 5-tuplet melody across a regular 4/4 time signature:
Listening to this over and over and rehearsing that part myself, I began noticing a pattern emerging. The pattern where you accentuate the first and third node in each tuplet started to sound like a regular swing rhythm. That made me test out a theory which I so cleverly named “The 5-tuplet Swing Theory”. In here, I try to notate swing in a different way than the regular triplet pattern where you accentuate the first and third node there as well. I felt that the 5-tuplet actually had a closer feeling to swing than the 3-tuplet.
Try it yourself and see what you think of it:
Download the 5-tuplet Swing Theory as a pdf by clicking here.