Marcinho Pereira, is from Brazil and had been playing drums for more than 30 years.

For the last 10 years had been living and studying in Europe, this experience has helped him to understand why some features of Brazilian rhythms can be difficult to play for drummers with a non-brazilian background. In practise, brazilian drummers grow up studying the drum kit fundamentals with traditional Brazilian percussion as a foundation, trying to apply the fundamentals to the most commonly played rhythms like Baião, Ijexá, Samba, Frevo, Maracatu and various others.

With this in mind, He's proposing a short, objective course where we will study some drum kit fundamentals using these Brazilian rhythms as a foundation.

He's not going to explain the history of the rhythms or create a dictionary of rhythms/grooves.

The idea is to use ostinatos in the right hand and feet and suggest fundamental figures for fluidity in playing these rhythms, but with a focus on a real independence of the limbs, not just learning patterns and sticking to the same thing.

The first rhythm used is a rhythm from the north east of Brazil: the Baião.

It is a rhythm originally conceived for 4 percussion instruments: the Zabumba (low), Triangle (high), Agogo (mid-high), and Pandeiro (mid). It’s very common to find groups with just a Zabumba and Triangle, and it’s exactly these two that give us our ostinatos. The feet imitate the Zabumba and the Ride imitates the Triangle.

The Baião was chosen for the first lesson in the series because it is clearly identifiable from just the Zabumba and Triangle parts, and if we treat it as a rhythm without a characteristic melodic ‘clave’ (which are very common in Brazilian rhythms, especially Samba, Ijexá and others) it is still very recognisable.