Welcome to Part 5 of my series on practicing drums without a drum set! This episode is all about polyrhythms. Understanding Polyrhythms The term “polyrhythm” describes several different rhythmic subdivisions that occur within the same unit of time. In this workshop, I’ll show you how you can easily create polyrhythmic patterns. The most popular polyrhythm example is the 3-against-2 (3:2) polyrhythm, in which the time unit of a one quarter note is divided into three eighth-note triplets and into two eighth notes: To be able to play both rhythmic subdivisions precisely – either alternately or simultaneously – it is very important to understand exactly how they overlap. You can figure this out by determining the least common multiple (LCM) of both rhythmic subdivisions. For the 3:2 example, that would be the number 6. If you divide the quarter note into six equal parts, you get 16th-note triplets. These can be […]

August 2026 Issue