Drum kit demo: Polyrhythmic snare 3 against 4 over fast jazz swing 8 bars

This is a drum kit demonstration. A polyrhythm is when you can discern while listening more than one main beat tempos and that these do not sub divide into each other by multiples of 2. So a beat which contains tempos like 50, 100 and 200 is not a polyrhythm, but if you can hear tempos like 50, 75 and 80 all at once, then what you have there may very well be described as a polyrhythm. Mathematically speaking the tempo numbers make up the odd order fractions: thirds, fifths, sixths, sevenths, but not eighths or twelves if that makes sense. The even order ones are debatable in my opinion.

Tuplets

However polyrhythms are not tuples, which in this case means to say a "three against four" polyrhythm does not involve any triplets. Or that a "five against four" rhythm does not involve any pentuplets. This video shows a polyrhythm of 3/4 which means for each 4 quarter notes in the 4/4 measure, there is going to be exactly 3 snares or exactly an average of 0.75 snares per beat (which makes no sense) but you get the point. Hopefully. 🙂

Thanks to: http://f.unkster.tripod.com/polyrhythm.html