Polyrhythms explored

Want to break out of the 4/4 mould? Here are some ideas on how… On the last few pages, we’ve stuck to the most basic rhythm type: the 4/4 meter, ie, four beats per bar. After all, that’s what most western electronic beats are based on. Yet more unorthodox drum patterns can be achieved by mixing and matching rhythmic structures within the same groove. For most electronic genres, you’ll probably want to anchor the main downbeats and hits (kick and snare, usually) on a 4/4 grid. After that, ancillary percussion such as hi-hats can play a different time signature (6/8, for example) over the top of that foundation, and those parts will cycle interestingly over the top. In practice, you don’t have to become a scholar – all you need is an awareness of how timings can interplay to create exciting grooves that break away from standard rhythmic structures. Here’s a bog-standard kick and snare rhythm in 4/4. There’s a kick on every beat of the bar (the ‘1, 2, 3, 4’) and a snare on 2 and 4. Although hi-hats and percussion can adhere to this basic rhythmic framework, they can also be looped polyrhythmically… Now we’ve added a short hi-hat pattern with different velocity notes. By dragging this track’s end loop point to the left, we tell this loop to cycle at a different signature to the kick-snare. These hats drift and loop over the kick-snare base, but change the groove. Now we’ve added new sounds, and looped each one by a different length. Each one is on its own rhythmic ‘journey’ of sorts, and all of them combine to make a techno-esque percussive groove that endlessly drifts along in a pseudo-random fashion.