The polyrhythm trainer
Two pulses at once, on a ring you can watch: three against two, four against three, five and seven against four, each voice at its own pitch so you can hear which limb is which. And the other half of independence: a hi-hat that never moves while the kick goes through every sixteenth-note permutation. Free, in your browser.
The tempo is the pulse: the outer ring's beats.
5 against 4 and 7 against 4 are a member perk — create your free account and they unlock. 3:2 and 4:3 are free for everyone.
3 against 2
Say it: nice cup of tea
Outer ring, low voice: the pulse (2 per cycle, left hand or foot). Inner ring, high voice: 3 evenly across the same cycle, right hand. The line sweeps one cycle. The row underneath is both written on the smallest grid they share: play that row and you are playing the polyrhythm.
Kick on every beat. The hat is the thing that must not change; if it wobbles when the kick moves, slow down until it does not. When one permutation is boring, go to the next.
How to practise polyrhythms
A polyrhythm is two pulses at once. In three against two, one limb plays three even notes in the time the other plays two; both start together and meet again at the top of every cycle. Nobody feels both at once at first. What you can do is play the composite — the row under the ring — as one rhythm, and then notice which notes belong to which limb. "Nice cup of tea" for 3:2 and "pass the bread and butter" for 4:3 are how drummers have learnt them for a century, and they still work.
- Play the composite on one surface with one hand until it is a phrase, not a puzzle. Say the words.
- Split it: pulse in one hand, the other voice in the other. Mute one voice in the trainer and play the missing one yourself.
- Move it to the kit. The pulse on the hi-hat foot or the kick, the other voice between snare and toms.
- Slow. 60 BPM is a good place to live for a week. The tempo is the pulse, so 3:2 at 60 is three notes in two seconds.
The independence drills
The hi-hat ostinato is the thing being trained, not the kick. Every one of the fifteen permutations puts the kick somewhere the hat hand does not expect, and the hand's job is not to notice. Start with the single placements (1, e, &, a), then the pairs. When a permutation goes from impossible to boring, it is learnt; the practice log is where you write which one you reached.
These drills sit naturally after lesson five of the beginner course, which introduces the "e" and the "a". The tempo trainer climbs the BPM for you once a drill is clean, and the rudiment trainer is where the hands go for the same kind of work.