How To Groove With Polyrhythms

Hinzugefügt: 2026-06-08

[00:00:00]All right, a few lessons ago you started with the basic 3/2 polyrhythm and this is one of the absolute building blocks for a lot of grooves in modern styles of drumming. So, I'm going to start this lesson out by taking you through a couple of different ideas that use this polyrhythm at their core and then I'll show you a couple of ideas from Tesseract's library that feature this polyrhythm. To kick things off, let's put a simple groove together where the 3/2 polyrhythm is the relationship between the pedal hat which is playing quarter note triplets and the right hand which I'm going to put on the ride cymbal which is just playing quarter notes. This is all happening within a bar of 4/4. The kick drum is on the one and the snare is on the three. And this isn't a particularly advanced groove, but it requires us to use four limbs and play those quarter note triplets on the pedal hat which is a little tricky at first. So, if this is your first time doing it, take your time because that's going to be the tricky part of this exercise.

[00:00:55]>> [music] [music] [music] >> And we can instantly spice this groove up just by adding in some ghost notes that are locking into that triplet pulse that's being implied by the pedal hat.

[00:01:18]And to do that, we're going to start out with the ride cymbal on the quarter notes and switch to an eighth note triplet feel. And in between those ride notes, we're going to play ghost notes on the and and the a of 1 2 3 4 and that's going to be played as a double stroke like this. 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a 4 and a 1 and a 2 and a 3 and a [music] 4.

[00:01:48]NOW, WHEN WE PUT THIS PATTERN INTO THE GROOVE, WE'RE going to drop the ghost note that's immediately after the snare accent cuz it's kind of unnecessary and it's a bit tricky to get it in there.

[00:01:56]So, rather than two notes after that snare accent, we're just going to have a single note after an eighth [music] note triplet rest.

[00:02:11]>> [music] [music] [music] >> I'm also going to add in another kick drum towards the end of the second bar as a little signal that we're wrapping back around.

[00:02:31]>> [music] >> And then at the end of bar four, I'll play a short fill to bring this around to the start of the loop. And it can be as simple as that to start fleshing out a cool three over two poly-based groove.

[00:02:41]And we can take it in a load more interesting directions. For example, you might have heard of a thing called metric modulation. Now, the three over two poly specifically and metric modulation are very close friends. And we can modulate our groove using this friendship. Let me explain. Let's take the groove that we just played, and for the final bar, we're going to modulate the groove using implied metric modulation. This is where we imply that the feel of what we're playing, the feel of the groove, has changed. When in fact, nothing about the pulse that we're actually playing along to, or the tempo, or the metronome, that hasn't changed.

[00:03:16]Those things all remain the same. And with this polyrhythm, it's real easy.

[00:03:20]We've already established the subdivision that we're going to modulate to. And that's the count that we've established with the pedal hat. All we're going to do is temporarily lock our groove into that count for one bar.

[00:03:33]And to do this, we're going to align a kick drum with the first pedal hat, a snare on the third pedal hat, another kick on the fifth pedal hat, and a snare on that final sixth pedal hat. I'm going to play one bar of the regular groove into a bar of the modulation so that you can get used to [music] how it sounds.

[00:03:56]>> [music] >> Now let's try placing that modulation at the end of the longer exercise.

[00:04:16]>> [music] [music] >> Now if you remove the metronome from this [music] groove, it feels as though it's sped up. It feels as though we're playing something faster. But all we're doing is locking into [music] the pulse that that quarter note triplet subdivision has already defined for us.

[00:04:44]>> [music] >> And that might not be easy at first. If you find that to be quite tricky, try switching over to the synth mode in the exercise player and just loop that final bar while you listen to the metronome and slow it down a little bit as well.

[00:05:06]There's only so far that the theory of all of this stuff will take you. By understanding what I'm talking about.

[00:05:12]The real true understanding comes when you're sat behind the kit and you're trying it out in real life and feeling this stuff out for yourself. And in my experience, there's nothing that does the job better than playing along to some music. So, hit up the integration exercise for this lesson. Try playing along to some of the ideas that are in there. And that's where I'm modulating between three over two polyrhythm grooves and the type of modulation that we just established in exercise three where we lock into that quarter note triplet. Before wrapping this lesson up, I'd like to show you an example from a Tesseract song where the three over two polyrhythm forms the core of the groove that I'm playing.

[00:05:52]>> [music] >> In the song Luminary, the polyrhythm is happening between my left foot on the pedal hat and my right hand on the China. And if you isolate those two things, you've got your three over two polyrhythm, [music] and then the rest of the groove is built around that.

[00:06:12]>> [music] [music] >> In the next lesson, we're going to do something similar with the three over four polyrhythm, where we'll take a look at dotted eighth note grooves, [music] and I'll see you there. If you enjoyed this lesson, the next one is up on jaypostones.com right now, along with the notation and the audio assets >> [music] >> for this lesson, the customizable play-along exercises, and loads more.

[00:06:39]And best of all, you can check it all out with a 7-day free [music] trial. So, I'll see you in the practice room. Oh, and one more thing, to be the first to see when [music] my next lesson drops, make sure you subscribe to this channel.