The First Groove

Picture the first musician. A caveman with nothing but time, a rock, and a boredom problem.

He starts counting:

1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 2…

Every time he says “1,” he taps the rock. A simple game.

Then he changes the rules: he can never say a number while tapping the rock. The first pattern becomes:

tap 2 tap 2 tap 2…

That’s different. Kind of cool.

But even that gets old. So he starts counting to three:

1, 2, 3, 1, 2, 3…

Maybe he taps the rock on the 2 and 3. The pattern becomes:

1 tap tap 1 tap tap…

He keeps going. One day he counts to six and, just for fun, taps on the 1, 3, 4, and 5.

The pattern becomes:

tap 2 tap tap tap 6, tap 2 tap tap tap 6…

And suddenly the whole tribe is dancing.

He doesn’t know he’s just invented the 3:2 polyrhythm. He doesn’t know about least common multiples or time signatures or notation. He just knows how to count and have fun.

The groove came first. The math came ages later.