AMOGH RAO
CONCEPT VS FEEL
Understanding Advanced Sub-Divisions
Most kids who took geometry in secondary school would
remember the standard compass and ruler method of dividing
a line into equal parts. Dividing a line into 2 and 4 equal
portions was always easy. What wasn’t as easy however,
was dividing it into 3, 5 and 7 equal parts. The reason here is
that numbers (or anything for that matter) can’t be perfectly
broken into odd portions. There will always be the need
for greater and greater accuracy when scrutinizing the
distribution.
In this analogy, if you were to think of the line as a bar of
music, and the divisions as musical notes, you would land up
with tuplets. Tuplets in music have the same problem, but
since it’s music and not geometry, accuracy loses some of its
value and feel becomes more prevalent. You can experiment
with a very simple example. Try playing quarter notes or
eight notes inside every alternate bar of a 50 or 60 bpm whole-
note click (the slower, the better). You will notice that it is
relatively easy and you won’t rush or drag too much. Now
try the same scenario with quarter note or eight note triplets.
You can play it if you know how triplets feel, but unless you
have a seasoned amount of practice, you will rush or drag
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far more often than the even subdivisions. Triplets however
are far easier for the lay man or budding musician to master
since all of us have been exposed fairly frequently to triplet-
based rhythms like the waltz.
Coming to the more advanced tuplets like quintuplets,
septuplets and beyond, we lack the most important biological
sense needed to play it – the feel. This is because most of
us aren’t regularly exposed to music or any rhythms that
incorporate a 5-note or 7-note bar. So even if we understand
how they work, actually performing them with our hands
and moving cleanly between even and odd tuplets becomes
extremely challenging.
There are two common solutions to this. The first and most
obvious one, is listening to more of these rhythms regularly.
A very good starting point would be a drummer called Anika
Niles. Arguably one of the few drummers to make quintuplets
a mainstream phenomenon, she incorporates these concepts
so fluidly and minimally in simple, pop/rock contexts that
they become both easy to comprehend and a pleasure to enjoy.
The second would be internalizing the feel and positioning
of every note in a tuplet. For example, a quintuplet is
unnaturally faster than a quarter note pulse, but slower
than an eight-note triplet. This is because 5 falls between 4
and 6. So to begin with, you could try to forcefully rush your
quarter notes inside a bar or drag your eight-note triplets,
as long as every note is uniformly spaced and they all fit
snugly inside the bar. All of this must be done at a particular
tempo, over and over until you’ve internalized
what the quintuplet feels like and you’ve
embraced its unnatural feel. Then you
try to play two bars each of a 4, 5 and 6
note division. Finally, you try to bounce
between different tuplets at random
without losing the feel. If you want
to take it a step further, you can try
playing rudiments in quintuplets
and septuplets, by going over the
bar-line in most cases since a
majority of rudiments are even
phrases. The possibilities and
textures become endless once
your muscles and mind
memorize the feel of these
sub-divisions. Then it
all comes down to
practice.