Polyrhythm

A polyrhythm is any beat that contains two conflicting rhythms. They can trick your ears into hearing odd Time Signatures or meters, even though they may be written in Common Time. Before learning more about these rhythms, you might want to learn more about counting beats. See my lesson on How To Read Drum Music.

A polyrhythm is created by assigning repeating note intervals. The note intervals are determined most often by divisions of three, four, five, or seven depending on the time signature. For example, you may play your snare every three 16th notes and your bass every four 16th notes. The examples below will hopefully make this more clear.

When dealing with a polyrhythm, you may hear terms like a 3 over 4 or a 5 over 4 rhythm. These terms can be confusing because they seem to refer to the number of beats in the measure instead of the division used. Look at the example above. It is a 3 over 4 beat. You’ll notice three snare hits over four bass hits. But, the snare hits every four 16th notes while the bass hits every three, which to me would seem like it should be a four over three. Hopefully, I haven’t confused you more.

You can also create them using accents. This is useful for creating cymbal dynamics that can completely change the feel of a song. The example above is a simple 8th note rhythm. Kind of boring right? Let’s add some accents.

The example above adds an accent to every third 8th note. Since we’re using 4/4 time, we will have to stretch the pattern out to three measures to resolve it. There are eight 8th notes in a measure and 3 doesn’t divide into 8 very nicely. It does however, divide quite well into 24 (3 measures). Try playing the first boring pattern and then the second one with accents. You’ll notice the different feel that is created. If you changed the snare accents to cymbal hits, you’d have a pretty cool sounding polyrhymic beat.

For more cool beats, check out my Polyrhythm exercises. They’re a great way to get outside of your comfort zone as a drummer. They’ll push your skills and patience, but are a useful technique to know.



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