Back in january I wrote:

a beat is usually divided into two, three, or four even pieces. Why not five? This would be a tune in 10/8 meter, with five notes per beat. This has been on my "look into this" list since 2007, and I think I can now play fast enough to think about it in more depth.

Yesterday, with Julia in medford, I found myself free to make as much annoying noise as I wanted to. I sat down and tried to play in 10/8 at a speed where I could feel two main beats per measure, which is what contra would need. I couldn't do it. I thought: "aha! I should use a synthesizer, and then I can hear what it's like!". So I installed rosegarden, sound didn't work (This appears to have been fixed, though) installed timitdity to get a software midi output device, and put in a simple boom-chuck piano part. While I really should have expected it to be bizarre, I was unprepared for how bad it felt. You can listen if you want: teneight.mid