5/5 timing..."it doesn't exist"...wait...or does it?

Many say such a thing simply doesn’t exist, but I’ve had a problem with that.

The argument against is very crude and can be summed up in one sentence:
“There’s no such thing as a 5th note”

A 5th note would be a note that is 1/5th the duration of a whole note.
Like how a quarter note is 1/4th the duration of a whole note in 4/4 timing.

So…to me…I don’t see a problem at all.
Divide by 5 instead of 4.

Now normally, people just say, “Why not just use 5/4 timing? It allows you to put 5 quarters in a measure.”
True, but then again, a whole note in 5/4 is still 4 quarters…not 5.

Starting to see the picture?

Well, basically, true 5/5 would mean that when I write down a whole note, that it would take 5 quarters to fill up the time of the whole note.
Likewise, it would take 2 quarters and an eighth to fill up a half note (because we just divided 5 by 2, which is 2.5…2 quarters and half of a quarter…or known as and eighth note)

So, in the pursuit of proof that such a concept is actually possible, here is (for as far as I’m aware of) the first creation of a 5/5 note duration chart.
(If you would rather see the chart without the scroll bar [a bit easier], then click this link: download/file.php?id=246)

5-5 format FINAL.jpg1097×839 43.8 KB

oh please…

all you have to do is get your drummer drunk and you’ll be playing fifth notes all night…

but seriously, if you divided a whole note into fifths, you wouldn’t play quarters and eighths, you’d play fifths and tenths…

-Imp

5 beats per measure, fifth notes - indeed fifths and tenths ^

5/4 would be interesting tho

half note = 2.5 beats
quarter note = 1.25 beats
etc.

i’d like to find a good book on learning to read music

or better yet, take some piano lessons

Right, it would be in 5th and 10ths.

The above is a conversion chart.
Think of it like looking at a chart that shows you metric to imperial measurement.

The only problem is that there isn’t a new symbol for each 5/5 standard note (so far…I may have to in attempts of clarity).

But basically, that index on the bottom is a proper conversion:
It shows a 5/5 note on the left, and how many 4/4 notes it would take to make it.

The tree above starts out with a 5/5 whole note, and then breaks down how many of 4/4 notes for each level (half, quarter, eighth, sixteenth) it takes to make that respective level of 5/5 notes.

So, for instance, it shows how it would take a halve and an eighth from a normal 4/4 timing signature to make a 5/5 timing signatures half note.

On page, it would just be annotated as a regular half note, as the 5/5 timing signature would tell you that that half is equal to the time of 2 quarters and an eighth.

But since it’s not something that I think has been done yet…I’m thinking this is something that will need a conversion chart explaining the cross-over since everyone will be thinking in quarter, eighth, sixteenth, and not sure at all times just how “long” a 5th note would be (one quarter and a sixteenth).

a fifth note would be 5% shorter than a quarter note

-Imp

Yeah…on my way to driving to work I realized I made a morbidly ridiculous error in translation.
I added the difference instead of subtracting the difference.

Man…talk about oversight.
I’ll get around to fixing that.

I’m actually having a problem now…erg.

I can’t figure out how many of what type of notes in 4/4 would make up a quarter in 5/5…dammit!
And I didn’t save my math…

1/4-1/5=x
(15)/(45)-(14)/(54)=x
5/20-4/20=1/20

so, 1/20th should be added to a 1/5 to make a 1/4 note.

lets try to do that up by adding a 1/32 note with a dot.
1/32*3/2=3/64
1/20-3/64=1/320
so we are very very close…

But it seems obvious the conversion is not easy. Probably impossible since both 2 and 5 are primes so their powers never converge. (there might coincidentally be some note that with a dot and a correct number of it enables conversion)

To a mathematician the reason notes in fractions of two are popular is obvious. That way you get the most different lengths in the most intuitive way. Let’s consider the 1/5 note. It’s one fifth of a 1/1 note, of which one fifth is 1/25. So on to 1/125 and then 625 and on to 3125.

With fractions of two, you go 1/1, 1/2, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, 1/32, 1/64, 1/128, 1/256, 1/512… the numbers remain useable for a long time. If you want to halve any one of these, it’s no problem. From 1/256 you get 1/512 and so on.

Try halving 1/125! You get 1/250. How do you represent that in this system? That’s the same as 1/((5^3)*2). You’re mixing different primes into the system by doing something as simple as halving! It gets muddled very quickly. In the “fractions of two”-system, every note is representable as 1/(2^x) (sometimes with an added *1.5).

However, I’m beginning to see the value of dividing it into fifths… it’s a very different way of seeing music and I can hear the point your going to make that halving is not an intuitive thing to do in this system, but rather dividing it somehow in fractions of 5. This is surely a fun thing to explore. However, there’s a very easy way to accomplish this in the conventional system called tuplets! They also work for thirds and even sevenths: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuplet

So, we can keep the good sides of both systems and do away with the annoying math just by using tuplets. That’s my solution anyway. What do you think?

This might also be of interest: vai.com/LittleBlackDots/tempomental.html

Yeah, Yorick - the reason we use tuplets is that it’s easier than not using them. Part of that is convention, but part of it is that the fewer symbols we use, the easier they are to use.

Not to downplay the obvious musicological import of Stumpy’s suggestion.

But musical notation is full of “cheats”. There are many instances where a meter (and therefore the figures used) can be written more than one way. The simplest way is usually chosen.

But you know, Stumpy - follow your dream.

OK…I redid my math and got it fixed.
I just needed to remove the right amount…and needed to double check to make sure it was making sense.

But here’s the conversion of how much time a 5/5 version of a note takes in relation to how much time a 4/4 note(s) take.

So, for instance, writing a 5th note in 5/5 is like writing an eighth note and a sixteenth note down and tying them together.

(as to the tuplets…close, but many times, those are treated as slurs by many, many people…as well…it’s a messy way to write. It would be far easier to write 5/5 and know the timing of notes inherently.)

Oh…and I could still be wrong so I’m going to go back over this some more again later to make sure the half and whole are correct…quarter and below, I’m pretty sure on.

As far as the duration tree…I’m not really sure that form of presentation will end up being an effective way to convey the translation as it doesn’t break down AND convert cleanly.
The 5/5’s break down to each other relatively close to how things break down in that tree above…but not quite…
But it has no bearing on how much time that would be in a 4/4 format…

In short…I’ll get around to a re-do on the tree later.

There’s just no way to convert these…I’ve realized the above conversion is close, but it’s still slightly off…short a fraction of time.

For instance the quarter being made of an eighth and a sixteenth is actually still 1/16th short, which would mean that I would have to go figure out how to shove another 16th into the equation, which would mean tearing apart probably something like 64th or smaller notes to find it…and that’s if I could.

I’m thinking at this point, that there really is no such thing as a conversion.
The timing, sure, it exists, but a conversion…I’m really doubting that.

On a related note…what would relatively come close to the concept, but not really, is just doing 5/4 and telling a whole note to hold an extra quarter, and a half note to hold an extra eighth.
It wouldn’t be a true 5/5, but it would get rid of the annoying 5/4 with whole notes only equaling 4 beats issue.

Or you could just forget about conversion altogether and come up with a new set of symbols for 1/5 notes. Like using triangles or squares instead of circles on the notes. That would be easy and intuitive.

I had a look into it and figured a workable system. Check it out.

Beautiful; simply beautiful.

My problem is playing it; that’s why I have been hell-bent on a conversion; translating how long 2/5ths of 5 beats is in what normally would contain 4 beats.

It’s very difficult to get the mind to do.

I think I can train my mind around it if I toy with tempo’s (shoving some faster tempos in calculation to what would normally be slower tempos).

Are those somewhat akin to arpeggios?

What are you referring to by, “those”?

Sorry, never mind. I was thinking of something else.

I think I’ve got a way to translate HOW fast a 1/5 note is…which is REALLY difficult since it’s supposed to take place in the same amount of time as 4 beats, and it can be hard to figure out exactly how fast that is and isn’t.

But…I realized that the trick isn’t in a note conversion, but a tempo conversion.

4/4 Tempo name 5/5 Equivalent 4/4 Tempo name 48 Largo 63 Larghetto 60 Larghetto 79 Adagio 72 Adagio 94 Andante 76 Andante 100 Andante 112 Moderato 148 Allegro 138 Allegro 182 Presto 184 Presto 242 Prestissimo 208 Prestissimo 274 Prestissimo

Loosely, the formula is that a 5 fifth notes are 31.57% faster than a 4 quarter notes, so you increase your tempo of whatever you would have it as by 31.57% and you have your 5th notes timing.

Example, if I want to write a piece in Andante 76bpm, then I would write my 5th note version of this in 100bpm.

But you can’t just write 100bpm on the score, because if you wrote 100bpm on the score and wrote it in 5th notes, you would be calling for the notes to played at a tempo around 131-132 bpm since normally, 100 bpm serves 4 beats and not (truly) five.

The way I determined this was simple.

I flipped on a metronome, grabbed a stop watch, counted how long it took for the metronome to hit four beats.
Then I just sped the metronome up until it was doing 5 beats in the same amount of time the previous four beats were accomplished.

That tells me how fast I would play a fifth note.

Kind of screwy, but it’s what it is.

What’s funny about what I just wrote is that I just realized that…in a way…people might have already been playing 5th notes and not realized it.

Since…essentially, if you take 5/4 timing and write your whole notes with a tie to an extra quarter note, and likewise a half note to an extra eighth note, and put it on a speed of moderato when you know for a fact that you want andante, then you have successfully accomplished the same thing as a 5/5 timing structure.

Kind of funny really.

aaaaand another post.

Here I show how 3/4 is converted to 3/5 timing (yes…the mythical non-existent timing of 3/5).

The first is what it would be in 3/5 pure, (pretend those are the 5th note versions that Yorick drew).
The second is what you would normally have in 3/4 at the same tempo.
And the third shows that 3/4 in 100bpm is the same as 3/5 at 76bpm.

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