Drum Circle

Godfried Toussaint, a mathematician and drummer, has developed a system and notation for what he calls Euclidean rhythm. The notation is called a “rhythm necklace,” and I like it a good deal more than standard musical notation for illustrating beats.

▲ A preview of the interface.

In order to get a better feel for this approach, I built a tiny virtual drum machine using Clojurescript and Om. The code is here, and you can have a play with it here. Click on the light tan circles to add percussion hits, use the sliders to change the number of beats in each ring.

This entry is part of my journal, published August 11, 2014, in Berlin.