Five Takes is (of course) a play of words on Dave Brubeck’s Take Five. I fortunately did not have to play it five times to capture the song. It did however take multiple months for me to finish it. Read more about what’s behind my composition Five Takes.
I’ve always had a thing for odd meters. Not to be clever, just because they offer a nice way to surprise the ear — and add a sense of adventure. After my previous release Plusone, I felt like exploring 5/4. I already had a melody in that metrum that had been following me around for years. It had something—a promising line with a rough idea for the harmony—but it lacked a chorus or any real shape to turn it into a complete piece.
Still, the idea stuck with me. When I picked it up again after finishing Plusone, I thought I’d finally “just” turn it into a song. Instead, it started pulling me in all kinds of directions. Every time I worked on it, it offered something new. A new harmony, a new rhythm, a new structure. It didn’t want to settle. That was the real challenge: not writing in 5, but trying to catch the piece at all.
But first; let me quickly explain what an odd meter is. It tells you how many beats (counts) fit in one bar. Most songs use 4/4 or 3/4—musical comfort food. Easy to follow, easy to move to. But odd meters? Think 5/4, 7/8, 11/8. They’re called “odd” not because they’re weird (although… fair), but because they don’t divide evenly into groups of two or three.
Odd meters add an extra layer: subdivisions. These meters are usually broken up into smaller, uneven groups—giving each version a different feel. Take 5/4: you can count it as 3+2 or 2+3. That’s either ONE-two-three, ONE-two or ONE-two, ONE-two-three. Both are five, but they dance differently.
Seven gets even more interesting: my earlier piece June 16th was in 7, grouped as 2+2+3 (ONE-two, ONE-two, ONE-two-three). Five Takes sticks to 5/4, but in a 3+2 subdivision: ONE-two-three, ONE-two, over and over. It’s not about counting to five, it’s about sensing the subdivisions. That’s when you feel it.
“That was the real challenge: not writing in 5, but trying to catch the piece at all.”
Back to Five Takes. So the sheer amount of options that worked is what made this piece tricky. Every time I sat at the piano, it pulled me in a different direction. I played it upbeat and rhythm-forward – that works! I slowed parts of it down into something more contemplative -that works great too. Jazz-inspired, or leaning into a neoclassical vibe? Another question arose: Recorded Raw and intimate, straight from the piano I grew up with—or fully produced with strings and accordion layered in? It all works with this piece. That was the problem. What choices did I want to make?
At its core, the chorus-part worked really well in a Brubeck-inspired, rhythmic setting. But there was also a part that worked much better slowed down—Thiersen-style—where it could breathe more. In the end, I didn’t choose between them. I worked on a way to combine it all, keeping the harmony and time signature intact, but changing the tempo and texture entirely. Strangely enough, it held together great. And from there, the structure started to fall into place. A critic could say that this way I succeeded in avoiding to choose – in order not to kill any darlings. I would contest that, in fact, lots of darlings were killed in this process, only the dearest survived in Five Takes.
One of the trickier choices I had to make was whether or not to give the piece a swing feel. That term refers to how eighth notes are timed: you can play them evenly—what we call straight—or you can delay the off-beat notes slightly, giving them a swing feel. Since the chorus had a jazzy character, I naturally started leaning into swing timing while playing it. It felt good—maybe even better. But in the end, I decided to keep everything straight, to preserve a sense of unity throughout the piece. Swinging the chorus might have made it sound even jazzier, but this way, it stays part of the same world. Naturally, this calls for an example.
Here’s a snippet of the chorus played with a swing feel (as I do not play on Five Takes) —followed by the same passage, played straight (as played on Five Takes). After that a scale first in swingtiming, then straight.
The piece follows a form that’s both classical and a bit cinematic: it opens with a short intro that immediately signals we’re off—no buildup, no prelude, just straight into it. From there, it moves through two versions of the verse. The first is played rubato, showing that the melody can stand on its own, even without the underlying 5/4 structure. The second verse reintroduces the pulse, leading into a chorus built around a rhythmic, flowing left hand that’s clearly inspired by Brubeck’s Take Five.
Each section plays a different role. The verse is melody-led and harmonically relatively simple, leaning slightly classical. The chorus, by contrast, is more jazz-inflected: rhythm-driven, with a forward motion and a left hand pattern that creates a sense of swing in an otherwise odd meter.
At 2:06, the tempo shifts to half time, opening the door to the intermezzo—a slower, more introspective section that allows the piece to breathe. The key and time signature are retained, but feel and tempo are out of the door. The left hand here draws from the feel of Yann Thiersen’s Comptine d’un autre été, but with a twist: instead of just laying a harmonic bed, it carries its own melodic line. With just the left-hand thumb a distinct counter-melody is played, heard on it’s own at 2:24, that later subtly interacts with the phrases in the right hand.
The harmony is intentionally simple here: four repeating chords provide a steady foundation while the melody gradually builds in density and energy. With each repetition, the right hand adds more notes, expanding the texture and dynamic. This dynamic build up makes the return to the original tempo—double time from current tempo—feel surprisingly normal. As if one is launched back into the song. The final verse and chorus reprise earlier material, but with a touch more motion and sparkle, before the piece winds down with a quiet outro that mirrors the opening motif.
If you’re curious to dive even deeper, I’ve added a moment-by-moment breakdown at the end of this post. It highlights a few details I really enjoyed hiding in plain sight and allows you to listen-along.
Dave Brubeck’s album covers—especially the iconic Time Out from 1959—often featured abstract, modernist artwork that mirrored the experimental nature of his music. For Five Takes, I wanted to capture a similar spirit: a mix of bold, jazzy energy and the more cinematic, whimsical vibe of the film Amélie.
Brubeck’s visuals often leaned into cubism and abstraction—art that’s as rhythmically unpredictable and colorful as the music inside. On the other hand, the typography of Amélie adds that touch of softness and nostalgia, something that felt fitting for the intermezzo in Five Takes.
The goal with the artwork was to combine those worlds: the adventurous side of odd meters and shifting grooves, and the quiet, meditative feel of the slower sections. A cover that reflects both the complexity and the emotion of the music.
What’s next? While working on Five Takes, I took a few different turns. In the end, I chose the raw, familiar sound of my own piano—the one I know best and feel most at home on. But during the process, I also experimented with a more polished sound using Native Instruments’ Noire. That version gives more space for layering, especially if I want to add strings later on—which is something I’d like to explore. I also have a great accordion here, which I could use to double the melody in the intermezzo. So, let’s say this: I’m not done with Five Takes. I just paused at one of the possible stops.
Starts at bar 6. Music consists of three core elements: rhythm, melody, and harmony. To highlight the melody in the first verse, I deliberately take rhythm out of the equation. The playing instruction here is rubato – literally ‘stolen time’ in Italian – which gives the performer freedom to stretch or compress the timing as needed. It removes the grid, so the melody can speak more freely.
The harmony here isn’t really built from chords — it’s shaped through voice leading, as if every note were played by its own instrument. Following the voices sometimes leads to different harmonies than I’d choose if I were thinking in terms of traditional chords or harmonic theory.
Starts at bar 15. The intermezzo is closely related to the intro — in fact, I wrote it before the intro even existed. In this section, harmony takes the lead: Ebm to Db/F, with a lifting bassline that would normally continue towards GbM7 and Ab6. But not here — this first intermezzo is harmonically stripped down. Five Takes contains three intermezzos (or four, if you count the outro), and I wanted each to build on the last. This first one brings back the 5/4 time signature, right after the rubato of the first verse.
Starts at bar 19. The second verse is sort of a repetition of the first, but in time and with a more flowing left hand. In the verse of Five Takes, the melody gets special treatment. To make room for it, the rhythmic structure sometimes bends in unusual ways. Take bar 10 and bar 23, for example — the melody just needed a little extra space to breathe. You’ll see a fermata there, and I even split off the last two beats of the 5/4 bar (remember: one-two-three—ONE-two) into a separate bar, just to give the melody beforehand more room.
And then there’s bar 14 (3 beats) and bar 27 (2.5 beats). Yes, that’s a weird one. But be honest — did you notice? Bar 27 still works, even with just five eighth notes, because it uses a strong motivic idea: the lick. (The lick is a famously overused jazz phrase that somehow keeps sneaking into solos. Coincidence? Maybe.
Starts at bar 28.
Starts at bar 32.
Starts at bar 43.
Starts at bar 47 with the left hand only.
From bar 55 (2:40) the Right hand joins in.
Starts at bar 77. Brings back the original tempo.
Starts at bar 77. At bar 86 the intermezzo starts.
Starts at bar 90.
From bar 101 onward.
Following the pattern, the second verse seamlessly enters in a lower octave, giving it a stronger, fuller sound. There’s also more space for an original melody to emerge
In the second chorus, something interesting happens. The same melody is heard again, once again played with the thumb of the right hand. Previously, static pedal notes (Eb and Bb) were heard above the melody, but this time the pedal notes consist of a series of 5 notes. Initially, I wanted to give those 5 notes equal value (length), but since the first note also doubled as part of the melody and gained more gravitas while playing, it naturally became slightly longer. As a result, I notated it as an eighth note followed by four sixteenth notes. When putting a piece down on paper, sometimes you have to make compromises.
The chorus introduced us to the number 5, so it’s only fair that the pattern that follows is also made up of 5 notes, played in ascending order on the piano. Once we've got the pattern in our ears, the familiar left hand joins in. Now, the real magic happens: the 5-note pattern shifts over the ostinato in 8. It takes 5 repetitions of the ostinato (40 notes) before the first note of the pattern lands back on beat 1 of the ostinato. By then, the pattern has repeated 8 times. In those eight times, a different note from the pattern in the right hand appears on beat 1 of the ostinato each time. By accentuating those notes, a melody emerges from the fusion of the right-hand pattern and the left-hand ostinato. You can see these accents in bars 54-58. The melody: Bb (low), F, D, Bb (high), Eb.
To highlight this melody once again, the piece shifts up an octave at bar 58. Here, I also wanted to break away from the continuous flow of the left hand by introducing whole notes, creating a bit more space and calm. Additionally, I wanted to break away from the consonant harmony by introducing the B, the flat 13th of the Eb scale, or more precisely, the Abm6 chord. These moments of departure serve to prepare us for what’s to come: a warm bath of meditative bliss.
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