Music Morsel: Laments of an Icarus

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This morsel is in 4/4 time.

The ride cymbal plays continuous sextuplets. The kick drum plays a four bar phrase, made up of alternating eighth note pairs and eighth note triplets.

The sextuplets played by the drummer on the ride cymbal create the sound of a 3:4 polyrhythm. This means that in the time it takes to sound 4 notes of equal distance to each other, 3 notes of equal distance to each other sound as well.

The 3:4 polyrhythm often exists where 4 is the number of quarter notes, yet this example uses eighth notes. As a result, the drummer manages to fit two instances of the polyrhythm in each bar.

Music Morsels are musical fragments, collected and analyzed.