Cue the fuse, the sweat, and the guy dangling from the ceiling on a wire: this is the Mission Impossible theme, the spy riff that has been sneaking up behind unsuspecting cinema-goers since 1966. Lalo Schifrin wrote it, and then — because one impossible mission apparently was not enough — he wrote it in 5/4, purely so your foot would trip over itself trying to tap along.
This one-minute clip is my MelodyChords take on it: the whole spy theme, melody and chords, crammed onto a single guitar with no orchestra, no bassist, and precisely zero self-respect. Tabs are available if you want to sneak up on it yourself.
How the Mission Impossible 5/4 riff actually works
The reason this thing feels so twitchy is the time signature. Instead of a comfortable four beats, Schifrin hands you five, and the trick to not falling over is to stop counting to five and start grouping: think of it as a limping 3 + 2 — "1-2-3, 1-2" — with the ostinato bass hammering underneath like a heartbeat that skipped its coffee. Once your hand feels that lopsided grouping instead of counting individual beats, the whole riff snaps into place. If 5/4 still looks like alien maths, my time signature guide untangles it.
The other half of the magic is that sneaky, half-step-heavy melody sitting on top of a minor tonality — those flatted, chromatic notes are exactly why it sounds like a secret agent and not a nursery rhyme. In the MelodyChords arrangement your thumb keeps that relentless ostinato going while your fingers pick out the tune, which is a fantastic (read: humbling) exercise in making one guitar do the job of a whole spy-movie orchestra.
Concrete takeaway: loop just the two-bar bass ostinato until 3 + 2 feels like walking, then add the melody one phrase at a time — that's the entire mission. If you want the Guitar Pro file and the tabs before your self-destruct message plays, they're on my Patreon.