I have received several queries about polyrhythms, and was at first quite happy to resurrect the old rhythms of my African childhood and post them for people's interest. However, it rapidly occurred to me that -- although possibly entertaining -- this would in the long term have little real benefit to anybody. A bit like a haphazard collection of postage stamps, people would have 50 or so polyrhymic 'songs' of little real long-term value.

I therefore decided to put together a set of little patches that would instead focus on giving people some idea of how polyrhythmic textures were created with a view to showing people how to create their own and incorporating polyrhythms into their own music. The principles are, actually, quite straightforward.

First of all, I apologise for the simplicity and sparseness of these patches. I had, originally, gradually put a set together that were considerably more sophisticated and with a variety of switches and options, but I seem to have lost them. These just contain the basics -- which is all I am sure that most people want anyway. I will eventually recreate the instrument patches in particular for it had taken me quite a bit of thought and effort to recreate some of the original instruments.

The first patch, 'Polyrhythm 0' contains the fundamentals required for creating a polyrhythmic texture. You should establish a fundamental cycle length.

These tutorial exercises/presentations are based on a cycle of 12 beats because 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, 6; and, additionally, one can use 8, 16 and 24. It is, therefore, the shortest cycle with the greatest number of possibilities. Rhythm belongs to the community. It is the focal point of every life -- and of every community's life. Rhythm is how the energy of the community is united in the pursuit of destinies both collective and individual. In the African view without a collective destiny there is no individual destiny.

The first thing required is the 'main beat'. In this particular exercise the 12-beat cycle is divided into four giving three pulses for each main beat.

A person who cannot keep a main beat has no goal, no drive, no purpose in life; and a community that does not share a main pulsation is a community divided against itself. Since the main beat is, eventually, 'felt' rather than just heard, it is generally sounded on something muted and in the middle of the sonic range. Not too harsh, not too strident, not too loud; and yet something that everyone can hear when they got lost. Shekeres, rattles and so forth are commonly used for this. Handclaps and foot stamps are also accepted simply because everybody is sure to have one of those even if they do not have an actual instrument. Trying to establish a polyrhythmic texture without a main beat is rather like trying to programme a sound without a fundamental.

For individual practice, the main beat should at first be played by slapping a hand on a thigh or table or some such. Eventually, however, you are going to run out of hands so designate the main beat to the feet. Since this is a relatively simple exercise the main beat can be shared between the two feet.

Since rhythm is about life, the first thing one has to accept is that not everything will go smoothly. Something has to express the contrasting movements and forces in human life. On an individual level, something has to provide the training to be able to keep going in adversity. Therefore, a second vital component in establishing a polyrhythmic texture is a timeline. In this particular set of tutorial exercises I have established a timeline with 7 accent points. This is deliberately chosen because, in the end, the best way to keep this going is to feel or count in twos or fours; while, of course, the main beat is in triple time. But then again ... that is the whole point!!

The timeline should be played by the strong hand. And ... since it is what establishes the structure of what is to come, the timeline is traditionally played by something high-pitched and with not too many inharmonics. Something that can 'cut through the mix' so that everyone can always hear it and everybody knows where they are. Gankoguis, bells, and various kinds of metallic sounding percussion instruments are used for this purpose.

When the main beat and the timeline come together, a resultant is established such that sometimes the two sound together (beats 1 and 10); sometimes only one plays; and sometimes there is silence ( beats 2, 9, 11):

This particular resultant is therefore sounded as:

In point of fact, the timeline can be thought of as a simple 6-beat pattern of:

endlessly repeated. However, it is best not to think of it in this way otherwise the accents are rapidly lost. Sometimes the first pe coincides with the tsa that announces the beginning of the cycle and then, alternately, it does not.

It is this contrasting and shifting of the timeline on and off the tsa's which announce the main beat that really begins to establish a polyrhythmic texture. It also explains why Africans so often say that 'Westerners' have a poor sense of rhythm. It is not, actually, so much that 'Westerners' cannot tap their foot in time, but rather that, when dancing or playing, there is virtually no awareness of the accents and non-accents established by the interplay between the timeline and the main beat. When dancing, for example, the main beat asks us to centre ourselves. Thus there is a downwardness; an opening of the arms; the legs tend to do the same thing. These are the things done when the main beat and the time line coincide in the resultant. When, however, the timeline plays and the main beat does not, then there is a tension. The arms and the legs can cross; there can be a sense of upwardness; of lack of resolution. Thus when a disco dancer gyrates wildly in the discotheque, it is not so much that they can't keep time as that what they are doing bears absolutely no relation to the 'story' being told by the movement of accented and non-accented beats created by the juxtaposition of the timeline and the main beat. A skilled African dancer tells a story by what they do when each particular beat comes around. Thus a crowd can be ecstatically thrilled when a dancer skillfully performs a main beat action on an off-beat etc.

Many Western musicians have tried to incorporate polyrhythms into their work. The trick, however, is to actually DO them. It is not an easy matter to keep this relatively simple resultant going for 5, 10, 20 minutes or so without turning it around, inverting it, skipping beats etc. It is an exercise in concentration. It is easy enough to programme a sequences to do it for you, but in the end one has no feeling for the subtle ways in which different beats and rhythms can interact unless one actually tries to do it 'by hand'.

Once a neophyte drummer can create a resultant; and once they can keep it going indefinitely without being disturbed by anything; then it is time to move on to a bit more fun .. something a bit more challenging. Other beats and rhythms are gradually introduced.

These other beats can be played on a variety of instruments depending on what one wants to do with them. This brings to mind another point ... Africans think of notes as 'big' and 'small' rather than as 'low' and 'high'. Thus the main beat is usually played on something 'middle' or 'middling big'. Drums are also 'hard' and 'soft'. Soft drums are more mellow and with less harmonics; hard ones, obviously, are the opposite. The main beat should never be too hard because one is going to be hearing a lot of it. The timeline should be on something small, but also not too hard for otherwise it's harshness gets overbearing. However, it depends, of course, on the nature of the dance and what is about to be said.

The other beats that are added can be added in on big or small, hard or soft, loud or quiet drums depending upon the overall texture that one desires to create.

The patch polyrhythm 0+2 adds a beat cycle that neatly splits the 12-beat cycle into 2 parts. These, obviously, are played on beats 1 and 7:

There's nothing much to say except ... do it until you can do it comfortably and in your sleep. The idea here is really very simple. Just as easily as a Western violinist, a wind player, pianist, seeks to move without let or hindrance from C# to Bb, just so easily does an African dancer, drummer, singer or instrumentalist seek to be able to switch, in an instant, from playing around with a 2-beat musical phrase to a 16-beat one. The idea here is to be able, eventually, to keep the timeline going with your right hand, the main beat going with your feet, while using your lesser hand to pick out any other beats of your choosing. It is the shifting around and playing with the accents that is of the essence here.

Obviously, the initial patch was titled 'polyrhythm 0' because it was the basic resultant patch with zero additional instruments.

Hopefully, by now the purpose of the other patches in this set are obvious. The 'polyrhythm 0+3' patch splits the basic 12-beat cycle into 3 parts thus playing every four beats. Since the timeline has 7 accents while the main beat plays every three beats, rhythmic interest is growing.

Obviously, there are four different ways in which our basic 12-beat cycle can be divided into three:

Yes. Exactly. Learn to play all of them -- and then learn to smoothly and without fuss shift from the one to the other. The 4-1 switch labelled 'Select 1/2/3/4' will let you switch between them. (The patches I had lost had tried to establish a system for switching smoothly from any one pattern to the other whilst automatically resetting. Unfortunately I hadn't got it to work properly yet, so you are just going to have to do this by hand, at first, to hear the differences!!) Do try to get used to them for they all feel and sound different and can therefore be used at different times and for different purposes.

The other polyrhythmic patches in the set:+04, +06, +08, +12, +16 and +24 simply introduce beats divisions of the basic beat-cycle at the values concerned. As with the '+03' patch, where there are options available switches are provided to select between them.

And ... now that you know the principles concerned you will find nothing particularly difficult about them. Just play them ad nauseam until you have got the hang of them, can play them flawlessly, and so can keep the main beat going with your feet and the timeline going with your strong hand while you shift around the accents with your other hand. And ... oh yes!! Take a different rhythm for your feet. That is to say, these exercises have used a triplet division of 12 for the main beats of tsa (i.e. tsa - 2 - 3, tsa - 2 - 3, etc). Obviously, it is perfectly possible to establish a different main beat as in: tsa - 2 - 3 - 4, tsa - 2 - 3 - 4. Do the whole thing again with your feet doing this and your hands going through as above.

And then... and then...

Once you have got the hang of these, you should gradually be able to work out ways to create your own polyrhytmic textures. Obviously, you do not have to stick to multiples of two and three in order to create textures. However, surprising as it may seem, the most effective ones do tend to be multiples of two units against multiples of three. A five beat scheme against a seven beat scheme, for example, can also work. What you effectively have is a two beat scheme (five goes into seven with two left over -- always think of the modulo) which can then resonate and oscillate against your chosen main beat. Be careful because as with mixing, things can very rapidly get mushy. If you hear someone establishing a 22-beat against a 23-beat scheme, for example, take a sigh because it's a bit like a Wagnerian opera. These two can take so very long to oscillate against each other that it ends up sounding like a mush with nothing of very much rhythmic interest going on. It often helps, actually, to think of a chord. A 2 beat and 4 beat scheme 'fit' much like octaves do because the one is simply double the other. A 9-beat and 11-beat scheme can be thought of as rather 'like' a dominant 9th. However, it would be best if they were both played two, three, or four times as fast as something else -- i.e. the resultant -- so that the movements and shifts of the beats and accents are more apparent. But... it's up to you, really.

It's easier enough to set up an event sequencer fixed at 7 beats, another set at 11, to click to get the accent points you want, slap in a couple of perc or drum oscillators, gate them up, and then let them run and mess around with them until you get a rhythm or 'feeling' that you want. Once you have 5, 6, 7 or more drums or sounds going...  

Of course, this has only really scratched the surface...

Anyway ... I have done this in response to the very very many private emails that hit my inbox almost every time I post a polyrhythmic patch. Hopefully there are enough ideas and information in here for people to set about doing their own, and I look forward very much to hearing them.

I again apologise for the sparseness and so forth of both this text and my little offerings, but the ones I had originally prepared, which were considerably more sophisticated, just vanished when I was doing a clear out. I have just done this because if I don't I won't get around to doing them for an absolute age and I would rather just get them out of the way.