eBook – Rhythmic Permutations

The idea of writing my music– and drum instructional-related books probably started about ten years ago. Since then, its designs and contents have changed multiple times. After studying and graduating in drums, classical percussion and jazz at the Luca School Of Arts in Belgium, I started to teach. There, I laid the first foundations of what the actual content would be of my books. But, at the start of 2019, I started travelling the world. The ideas for writing my books consequentially got into the background. That was until I got to King island, where I had the chance to borrow a drum kit for the time being. Having no books or literature, I started writing my own exercises again. A couple of months and a week in isolation later, I proudly present to you my first eBook, Rhythmic Permutations.

eBook – Rhythmical Permutations:

Rhythmic Permutations

My first eBook, Rhythmic Permutations, isn’t much like any other book. It doesn’t have any classical music notation. In addition, as I said above, ‘instructional-related books’ and Rhythmic Permutations lacks instructions. It is more a visualisation of the concept, permutations. There are plenty of books to write about the endless possibilities of this concept. But, besides my plan to regularly upload online drum lessons, that will be for a future book. For people familiar with rhythmic permutations, I like to say that it is a book full of visualised rhythmic possibilities. If you are unfamiliar with permutations, the eBook logically orders all possible rhythmic combinations within a specific number of beats. White dots visualise all beats, and the black dot shows the rhythm. Not having any classical music notation is not to narrow the options down. The player can make his own subdivisions.

What’s inside this eBook?

The first chapter of the eBook starts with the 3-beat variations. Afterwards, the variations for 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12-beats follow. As a result, Rhythmical Permutations has 8,174 different rhythms divided over 107 pages, making it the perfect eBook for rhythmical- studies, exercises, and reading. It’s the rhythmical archive that, I think, lays an excellent foundation for advanced rhythm knowledge. But, once you dive deeper into this book and start experimenting, you will see it is not just an archive of different combinations. It is a book full of rhythmic possibilities. 

Permutations explained

Example of the 3-beat permutations from my eBook, Rhythmic Permutations

Technically speaking, rhythmical permutations and combinations are the same. With this book’s systems, the black dots go over all combinations possible enclosed by the pre-set amount of white dots, aka beats. For example: if there are three beats, there are three combinations with a single black dot: beats 1, 2 and 3. If we add a second black dot, there are three combinations with double dots: beats 1-2, 1-3 and 2-3. Adding a third black dot means that all the white dots are full. Therefore, the total amount of combinations in the 3-beat system is seven, excluding the blank combination. The difference between combinations and permutations, mathematically speaking, is that combinations can occur randomly. 

Consequently, permutation means that all combinations follow a particular order. All varieties in this eBook start on the first white dot. Afterwards, the first dot will move one step to the right each time. Once all first dot combinations occur, the first dot returns to get the second dot. This continues until all varieties have systematically passed the revue, creating permutations.

eBook – Rhythmical Permutations:


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