Make sure you've read through our lessons on Time Signatures and 7/8 Grooves before working through this lesson.
5/8 is similar to 7/8 in that it can be either simple or compound. In simple time it could be thought of as a bar of 2/4 with an extra eighth note. To identify which timing it is use the same approach as laid out in the 7/8 grooves lesson.
You would count a bar of 5/8 in simple time '1 + 2 + 3'. Notice that there is no '+' count at the end of the bar, the next count after 3 would be 1.
Listed below are several examples of simple 5/8 grooves. For this introductory lesson I have only used eighth and quarter notes.
Example 1
Example 2
Example 3
Example 4
Example 5
Example 6
Example 7
Example 8
TASKS
- Learn the grooves above up to a tempo of at least 130bpm.
- Think about fill construction in simple 5/8.
- Create some 4 bar phrases in simple 5/8. For now, use three bars of a groove followed by one bar of a different groove.