5/8 Time

Happy New Year everyone! In the last lesson we covered 5/8 Time time and hopefully you have a good understanding of it. In this lesson I would like to show you how to apply 5/8 time to your playing and how to change meters smoothly. First off, what is 5/8 time? It simply means 5 eighth notes per bar and the eighth note gets one beat. A common way to divide up a bar of 5/8 is in a combination of twos and threes, 2+3, 3+2 and with 2 pulses per bar.

Examples 1a and 1b show the two common ways a bar of 5/8 can be divided, the first one is 2+3 and the second is 3+2. Tap these two examples out first so you know how to get the right feel and the difference between the two.

Here with Example 2 is an example in the A Lydian scale (A, B, C#, D#, E, F#, G#) that I came up with to show you how you can apply this irregular time signature. It is based in 5/8 and it changes to 6/8 and to 4/4. The key to make smoother transitions when changing time signatures is to keep the tempo the same. You can think of 4/4 as 8/8, if you want to switch to say 6/8, you just take out two eighth notes, for 7/8 you take out one eighth note. The accented pulse in this line is mainly 3+2 and it switches to 2+3 beginning at bar 5.

MP3 - 5/8 Time, Example 2, Slow
MP3 - 5/8 Time, Example 2, Fast

Example 3 is another A lydian pattern in 5/8 that I came up with to show you how I would incorporate this into my music. This is all based with all 16th notes and can have the equivalency of 10/16, which is just 5/8 twice as fast. The first bar is a repeated 5 note pattern that can help you get the 5/8 feel right away, be sure to accent every first group of 5. The rest of this line is just arpeggios based from the A Lydian scale, B major, A major and E major.

MP3 - 5/8 Time, Example 3, Slow
MP3 - 5/8 Time, Example 3, Fast

OK, that is it for now! Make sure to you make up your own examples and don't forget to visit mikecampese.com.