Percussionistic

Playing more than one beat at the same time, is one of the richest experiences in drumming, especially when other musicians are playing each to a different beat. It can be very confusing and complicated to learn, especially with more than two beats. Several approaches exist to learn and master polyrhythms, and I’m using three different ways to practice and learn.

1. How does it sound: Using this method you try and listen to the two beats played together and how they are sounding in total. This works fine for simple combinations, especially 2:3 and 3:4. A good trick to learn these is transforming them to words. For example the 3:4 polyrhythm sounds like, “take the bread and butter”. Polyrhythm 3:4
2. Drum tab (using tables): This is the easiest way to mentally understand exactly where each beat is executed, and to visualize the relationship between the beats. The sheet below show all the rhythms and their relationship to each other from 1 to 10. You can easily download the sheet, or scroll and see any combination of beats you want. The 1 beat is used as a reference for counting.




3. Accents: I got to learn this approach through Jason Gianni’s videos on VicFirth’s website. It is a very interesting way to understand how the beats work together, especially knowing that you are not playing a polyrhythm! The main idea is to play eighth notes on the hi-hat along with a simple base and snare beat (on 1,2,3, and 4). Although this is the simplest beat you can ever play on a drum set, the trick is that every third note on the hi-hat is accented. It feels strange to play it, and needs a lot of practice. I found the best way is to read it and play it, it truly gets you started in clearly understanding the two rhythms working together.