Alternative Rhythmic Placements for More Adventurous Options If you’ve been working through my articles over the past few years, you’ve been exposed to a good number of odd subdivisions, particularly quintuplets. We almost exclusively start those advanced rhythms on the quarter-note pulse so that the notes line up nicely and evenly. But we can push our ear even further by exploring how to phrase odd rhythms starting on the offbeat. In Example 1 we have an unassuming bar of 4/4. There are three beats of triplets and two 8th notes. The only strange thing is that the second group of triplets starts on the & of beat 2, which puts beat 3 in between the second and third partials of the triplet. A great first step toward being able to accurately feel how that rhythm sits over the pulse is to double the triplet subdivision from 8th-note triplets to 16th-note […]

September 2020 Issue