the.com/polyrhythm
Two rhythms arguing with each other and somehow agreeing to call it music.
means The simultaneous use of two or more conflicting rhythmic patterns that don't share the same pulse, yet lock together into one piece.
from Built from Greek roots: 'poly-' meaning many, and 'rhythmos' meaning measured flow or movement — the same root that gives us 'rhythm' itself. The word is a straightforward 19th/20th-century music-theory compound, but the practice it names is ancient, deeply developed in West African drumming traditions long before Western notation had the vocabulary to describe it.
- classic example
- 3-against-2, the gateway drug of drummers
- brain effect
- forces each hand to think independently
- origin
- deeply rooted in West African drumming traditions
- not the same as
- polymeter, which shifts bar lengths instead