Let’s have another quick look at the new Sungazer album, jumping to a later part of the record: track 7, “Cool 7,” the majority of which is in 7.

This tune is actually the reason I even knew this LP came out, as I stumbled across a video the band shared explaining some of the timing mischief happening towards the end of the track:

As the video explains, the band starts subdividing quintuplets on top of a dotted quarter note pulse rather than quarters. The measures are driven by 5:3 tuplets, ending with more traditional 8th note triplets on beat 7:

The effect is that the tempo sounds like it slows down, perhaps also with a meter change. The quintuplets are just a bit faster than the triplets (11% faster if I’m not mistaken*), but otherwise these tuplets sound pretty even, so it’s as if the song is in 23/16, or some such combination of time signatures. 

The band calls this technique “pulse morphing.” I have never heard such a term before — most drumming blowhards would call it a metric modulation, which isn’t really accurate, despite what every drummer on the internet seems to think. Adam and Shawn seem to want to avoid using the term metric modulation here, probably because they actually went to school. The groove itself resembles a so-called “quintuplet shuffle,” which Shawn has famously talked about on his YouTube channel.

“Cool 7” really got me thinking about tuplets on dotted notes. More specifically, playing tuplets built around dotted notes while not in a dotted time signature. That is to say, playing something like a 5:3 rhythm in 4/4 rather than 12/8.

If this is all new to you, it must come across as a bit jive, but in the last ~20 years, such tuplets have really become en vogue in the drum corps world, especially. It’s one way to get as many feel changes as possible without changing time signature or tempo — neither of which you can really do if you’re writing a drumline part for an arrangement that’s already done. Over-the-barline tuplets fall into the same category, in a manner of speaking.

Indeed, the first time I encountered anything like this was when I went to a drumline clinic ages ago, and I remember my horror at seeing a 4:3 rhythm in a piece that was in 4/4. It had to be a mistake, I thought. Those rhythms are for 12/8, not 4/4!

Well, those rhythms are for both, and playing 4:3 tuplets in 12/8 shows that it isn’t as batty as it seems. Many drummers wouldn’t have a problem playing this:

Still, these tuplets are tough to crack, and unlike “Cool 7,” it’s often the case in drumline music that these rhythms don’t punctuate a prolonged feel change, but are rather surrounded by a variety of other subdivisions:

Naturally, the issues of jumping back and forth between subdividing quarters/8ths and subdividing dotted notes, as if you have to execute a very brief, on-the-fly pocket change. 

Despite how commonplace the tuplets are in certain percussion disciplines, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of resources out there for getting familiar with them. Maybe it’s because it’s a bit difficult to even search for it. “Dotted note tuplets in 4/4,” “5 over 3 rhythms in 4/4”… with the increasing dysfunction of Google, it’s hard to get anywhere.

I’ve been wanting to tackle these tuplets for a while now, and I have some timing exercises to share that have really gone a long way to get me comfortable with these rhythms. These drills alternate between different dotted 8th check patterns, and the tuplet in question (4:3, 5:3, and 7:6).

Each drill has a version that starts on a different 16th note, so you can get more flexible with these tuplets:

Start by playing these exercises very slowly, with a click, and really try to focus on how much space the dotted 8th note takes up, and do your best to subdivide it into the proper amount of equal notes, being careful not to play a different, more traditional tuplet instead. For instance, don’t play a quintuplet instead of a 4:3 rhythm with a 16th note. 

It’s also helpful to just program these rhythms with MIDI and hear how they sound. I couldn’t think of an efficient way to share play-along tracks, so I’ll just give you a folder of MIDI files, one for each exercise. Throw one into a DAW or notation app, pick a tempo, and loop it to your heart’s desire.

Even after getting comfortable, it’s challenging to incorporate these tuplets in everyday playing without sounding like you’re making a mistake or irritating your bandmates. It’s still worth exploring as it’s an underutilized gag, even among the most intrepid drumset players.

That’s all for now. There are a few other wacky things you can do with tuplets, such as gnarly offbeat stuff, so maybe I’ll explore them later. 

Download PDF.

Download MIDI.

* ^ If you’re wondering how I got this number, dividing one of these tuplet ratios by the other will give you the difference. Just treat them as fractions and remember your grade school math (flip one of the fractions, then multiply and simplify):