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.

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