Using Drumbeats to Theorize Meter in Quintuple and Septuple Grooves

Abstract

This article explores common approaches taken by drummers when playing music with a quintuple or septuple groove. Based on original analysis from a corpus of 350 songs released during the half-century between 1967 and 2017, I show that these grooves fall into three categories: undifferentiated, in which the drum/s and/or cymbal/s that mark each attack do not change in the course of the groove; backbeat variants, based on the alternation of kick and snare attacks, as in the common-time backbeat; and polymetric grooves comprising two distinct metric cues, often pitting the drums against the rest of the band.