Quintuplets

Quintuplets are a similar concept to Triplets and Sextuplets. In these subdivisions you crammed in three or six notes where you would expect to found two or four notes. With a quintuplet you will be playing five notes where you would expect to see four. At level 3 you will be dealing with sixteenth notes.

Quintuplets are identified by a '5' above the group of notes. Sometimes a square bracket is put over the notes as well. Written below is a bar of Quintuplets:

Quintuplets Without Brackets.

Notice that for each crotchet grouping, there are now five notes joined together with one double beam so when playing with a metronome, you will squeeze in five even notes to every click.

For the time being you should play the sextuplet as a Single Stroke Roll, meaning that the sticking will be 'R L' all the way through. When played this way quintuplets will have a similar behaviour to the eighth note triplet in that each beat of the bar will start on a different hand. Notice in the example above that beats 1 and 3 start on the right where as beats 2 and 4 start on the left. This can be avioded with the application of double strokes if necessary or you can use it to your advantage in groove and fill construction.


TASK

  • Experiment with playing quintuplets as a single stroke roll.
  • Experiment with different stickings for a set of quintuplets.
  • Think about what exercises, grooves or fills you could construct using this new subdivision.

An Exercise

When you are comfortable playing the quintuplet individually try playing a bar of straight sixteenth notes followed by a bar of quintuplets then repeat. The change in timing can be hard to get but it is a great exercise for speeding up your hands. Use single strokes all the way through.

Switching from straight sixteenths notes to quintuplets.

Lessons

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