I’ve already written a bunch of posts on microrhythms and have since created a little free program to help create microrhythm in MIDI files. Now, I want to try and give a better explanation on how morphing works.

Morphing occurs when you put two rhythms in opposition. Let’s take the fairly easy example of the traditional Gnawa three-note rhythm. The two conflicting rhythms here are the straight triplet and a quintuplet feel “swing” version of itself. This conflict is made abundantly clear by Malcolm Braff’s conception of it.

Triplet notes (below) conflicting with a quintuplet swing version of itself