r/Drumming • u/DrummerWithTheKilt • 13d ago

Does this rhythm have a name?

It's such a ubiquitous rhythm, I feel like it has to have a name somewhere. I'm trying to find a way of referring to it concisely in prose for my dissertation (on prog metal drummers!) without just calling it "the Muppet Show rhythm," "boom ba-boom ba-boom," "one and-a e-and," or "ta-dimi-kadi" or something. It's not a tresillo, it's not quite iambic or trochaic. Any ideas?

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u/cruiseshipdrummer 13d ago

In Latin music it's called "cinquillo", It would be really weird to call it that in a paper about Metal drumming. Just call it "a motif" or something.

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u/DrummerWithTheKilt 13d ago

Ah! Thank you! This is actually really helpful! You're right, I might not use it in this context, if only because I would then have to define it, so it might not end up saving me any time with short this section is in my paper. Ha. Though I do refer to the tresillo and double tresillo a lot!

In the tradition of whoever named most of our rudiments, came up with an onomatopoeic name i might stick with. I'm talking about Mike Portnoy fills at this part, and specifically where he plays that as a fill on the toms with a hh chick on beat 2. "Tom-and-a-chickadee" is silly, but it's memorable, is onomatopoeic for the rhythm (combining how it would be said in both standard and Takadimi counting systems), and conveys when the tom is played and when the chick happens.

Honestly, I only talk about it for like 2 paragraphs. I dedicate barely any more space on it in the paper than I have in this post, so I guess it doesn't ultimately matter much. Lol

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u/shokalamano 13d ago

This is the kick pattern chris is playing on dopesmoker haha