Every rhythm Coypu can generate — 31 of them — with the step pattern, onset positions and grouping read straight from the package source, and notes on where each one comes from.
_tools/generate-rhythm-library.cjs. If a pattern here disagrees with
what you hear, the source has changed and the page needs regenerating — the two cannot drift
silently.
1. 🌴 Cuba & the Caribbean 7
The clave family and its relatives. These are timelines: unvarying reference patterns that the rest of an ensemble orients to, rather than parts that develop.
Three strokes over eight pulses, grouped 3+3+2. The most widespread rhythmic cell in Afro-Atlantic music: it underlies the Cuban son, Puerto Rican bomba, Brazilian maxixe, the New Orleans second line and modern reggaeton. In Cuban practice it is the first half of the son clave.
8 steps · onsets 1, 4, 7 · grouping 3+3+2
The five-stroke key pattern of Cuban son, and through it of salsa and most Afro-Cuban popular music. Clave means key or keystone: every other part in the ensemble orients to it. Its third stroke falls on step 7 — move that one stroke to step 8 and you have the rumba clave.
16 steps · onsets 1, 4, 7, 11, 13 · grouping 3+3+4+2+4
The rumba clave, spine of secular Afro-Cuban drumming — guaguancó, yambú and columbia. It differs from the son clave by a single stroke, the third landing on step 8 rather than 7, which gives it a harder push against the pulse. It took shape in the solares of Havana and Matanzas in the nineteenth century.
16 steps · onsets 1, 4, 8, 11, 13 · grouping 3+4+3+2+4
The habanera cell, and the bass tumbao derived from it. It travelled out of Cuba into Mexican danzón and Argentine tango, and — as Jelly Roll Morton’s “Spanish tinge” — into early jazz. Coypu’s name for it reflects its later life as a bass pattern in son and salsa.
8 steps · onsets 1, 4, 5, 7 · grouping 3+1+2+2
Five strokes in eight: cinquillo in Cuba, banda in Haitian Vodou drumming, and part of moribayasa among the Malinke of Guinea — three names for one rhythm, and a neat illustration of Atlantic circulation. Structurally it is tresillo with the gaps filled in.
8 steps · onsets 1, 3, 4, 6, 7 · grouping 2+1+2+1+2
From the Puerto Rican bomba, among the oldest African-derived genres in the Caribbean, developed by enslaved people on the island’s sugar plantations. The dense cluster on steps 4–7 is its signature. Bomba is a dialogue form: the lead subidor drum answers the dancer rather than leading her.
8 steps · onsets 1, 4, 5, 6, 7 · grouping 3+1+1+1+2
Puerto Rican plena — the “sung newspaper”, a topical narrative song form from early twentieth-century Ponce, played on hand-held pandero frame drums.
16 steps · onsets 1, 4, 6, 9, 12, 14 · grouping 3+2+3+3+2+3
2. 🇧🇷 South America 2
Two key patterns from the Atlantic coast of South America, both descended from the same Afro-Atlantic timeline tradition as the Cuban claves.
The bossa nova clave, from the Rio de Janeiro of the late 1950s — in essence João Gilberto’s guitar reduction of samba. Its five strokes sit as evenly as sixteen steps allow: the pattern usually cited as the Euclidean rhythm E(5,16). Note that Coypu’s own #(5 16) euclidean uses a Bresenham variant yielding a rotation of this rather than the bossa pattern itself — use bossa when you want the clave.
16 steps · onsets 1, 4, 7, 10, 13 · grouping 3+3+3+3+4
The key pattern of Colombian cumbia, a coastal form braiding Indigenous gaita flutes, African drumming and European song into one of Latin America’s most exported rhythms.
16 steps · onsets 1, 5, 7, 9, 13, 15 · grouping 4+2+2+4+2+2
3. 🥁 West & Central Africa 6
Bell and drum timelines from the traditions the Caribbean patterns descend from — plus one twentieth-century popular form, soukous, that travelled back across the Atlantic in the other direction.
A bell timeline from West African practice, carried into Caribbean music. Like all timelines its job is to stay invariant: drummers, dancers and singers orient to it, and it does not change with the section.
16 steps · onsets 1, 5, 7, 11, 13 · grouping 4+2+4+2+4
From the Ewe gahu, a twentieth-century recreational dance said to have been carried home by Ewe traders returning from Nigeria.
16 steps · onsets 1, 4, 7, 11, 15 · grouping 3+3+4+4+2
The pattern behind Congolese soukous — the guitar-led dance music that grew out of Cuban records re-imported to Kinshasa and Brazzaville in the 1940s and 50s, then swept the continent. The paired strokes give it a forward lurch.
16 steps · onsets 1, 4, 7, 11, 12 · grouping 3+3+4+1+5
Ashanti funeral and ceremonial music from Ghana, played on atumpan talking drums with a bell. Coypu’s pattern is back-weighted — its strokes fall at the end of the cycle, pulling toward the downbeat that follows.
8 steps · onsets 4, 6, 8 · grouping 2+2+4
An Ashanti recreational dance, lighter in function than adowa. Note that in the current Coypu source sikyi and adowa carry an identical pattern, so the two selectors sound the same — the distinction is documentary rather than rhythmic.
8 steps · onsets 4, 6, 8 · grouping 2+2+4
In Afro-Cuban practice bembé names a Yoruba-derived ceremonial music whose bell pattern is normally a seven-stroke timeline in twelve pulses. Coypu implements Godfried Toussaint’s sixteen-pulse reinterpretation, which keeps the syncopation while fitting a binary grid. It is an adaptation, not the ternary original — and it is exactly what #(6 16) euclidean produces, so the Euclidean claim is verifiable rather than decorative.
16 steps · onsets 1, 4, 7, 9, 12, 15 · grouping 3+3+2+3+3+2
4. 🪗 Balkans & Anatolia 2
Additive metres, which group pulses unevenly instead of subdividing a bar evenly. Neither fits a sixteen-step grid, which is the point of them.
Aksak is Turkish for “limping” — the family of Balkan and Anatolian metres that group pulses in uneven twos and threes rather than evenly. Coypu’s source calls this one a pseudo aksak: a ten-pulse approximation of the feel.
10 steps · onsets 1, 3, 7 · grouping 2+4+4
A genuine additive metre in thirteen pulses rather than an approximation — and unplayable on any grid that assumes powers of two. This is the pattern to reach for when you want the real asymmetric lilt.
13 steps · onsets 1, 3, 5, 7, 10, 12 · grouping 2+2+2+3+2+2
5. 🎛 Electronic 3
Three parts of one jungle kit, all thirty-two steps long. Route them to separate instruments and run them together.
Jungle emerged in early-1990s London out of hardcore rave: heavily resequenced breakbeats — above all the Amen break — over slow, dub-derived basslines. The kick is sparse because the break carries the motion.
32 steps · onsets 1, 5 · grouping 4+28
The displaced backbeat that gives jungle its lurching half-time feel against a doubled tempo.
32 steps · onsets 9, 15, 21, 27 · grouping 6+6+6+14
The busiest of the three jungle patterns, its strokes clustered in the second half of the cycle. Use it for ghost notes and rim work underneath the kick and snare.
32 steps · onsets 12, 14, 18, 20, 24, 26, 30, 32 · grouping 2+4+2+4+2+4+2+12
6. 📐 Metric & Utility 9
Not world rhythms but note values and grid divisions — and in practice the ones you will reach for most. Their patterns scale with the receiver, so the visualisations below are shown at 16 steps.
Four-to-the-floor. 16 downbeats gives four evenly spaced hits across sixteen steps — the foundation of house, techno and disco.
16 steps · onsets 1, 5, 9, 13 · grouping 4+4+4+4 · a trigger on every 4th pulse
The complement of downbeats. Layer the two for the classic kick-and-offbeat-hat pairing.
16 steps · onsets 3, 7, 11, 15 · grouping 4+4+4+4 · a trigger on the 3rd pulse of each group of 4
Eighth notes.
16 steps · onsets 1, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, 15 · grouping 2+2+2+2+2+2+2+2 · a trigger on pulses 1 and 3 of each group of 4
Sixteenth notes — a trigger on every step. Identical in output to trigs.
16 steps · onsets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 · grouping 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 · every pulse triggered
Every pulse triggered. Identical to semiquavers; both names exist for readability — trigs when you mean “fire constantly”, semiquavers when you mean a note value.
16 steps · onsets 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16 · grouping 1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1+1 · every pulse triggered
No triggers at all. Use it to hold a slot in the Performance silently, or as a blank you fill in later.
16 steps · no triggers at all
One trigger per bar, with a 16-step duration — a whole note that lasts its bar.
16 steps · onsets 1
A semibreve is a whole note, but in Coypu the two are not identical: both fire once per sixteen steps, yet semibreves sets a 32-step duration and a 0.9 gate time while wholes sets 16. For a note that lasts exactly its bar, use wholes.
16 steps · onsets 1
A breve — double the whole note. One trigger per 32 steps, with a 32-step duration and a 0.8 gate time.
32 steps · onsets 1
7. 🎲 Generative 2
Patterns that differ every time you evaluate them. There is no fixed visualisation because there is no fixed pattern.
A fresh random pattern of ones and zeros on every evaluation, at roughly even density. 16 randomTrigs to: #hh is the quickest way to get something moving.
a fresh random pattern on every evaluation
As randomTrigs, but you set the density. 16 randomTrigsWithProbability: 30 fires on roughly 30% of steps; low values give sparse, spacious patterns, high values approach trigs.
random, with the density you specify
7. How to read these patterns
Each card shows the rhythm as a row of steps: a filled cell is a trigger, an empty one a rest, with a small gap every four steps to mark the beat. Underneath, three facts computed from the pattern itself.
| Fact | Meaning |
|---|---|
| steps | The length of the underlying pattern. Multiply by this number, not by 16 — 13 trueAksak and 26 trueAksak are right, 16 trueAksak truncates mid-cycle. |
| onsets | Which steps carry a trigger, counting from 1. |
| grouping | The gaps between successive onsets, wrapping round the cycle. This is the number that tells you what a rhythm actually feels like — tresillo’s 3+3+2 is the whole of its character. |
A dashed tag under a card means the rhythm also accepts a note string, so you can give it pitches as well as a rhythm:
16 claveSon: '36 38 42 46' to: #perc.
Not every rhythm has that variant. Those that do are tagged; the rest take the plain form and
you add notes separately with notes:.
9. Troubleshooting
16 bomba: '36 38' raises doesNotUnderstand
A bug in the Coypu source: Integer>>bomba: never assigns its
pattern variable, so it is nil when the method reads
pattern size. The plain 16 bomba works fine — add notes separately
with notes: until it is fixed.
A rhythm sounds truncated or lurches at the loop point
The receiver is not a multiple of the pattern length. trueAksak is 13 steps and
aksak is 10, so neither divides 16. Use 13 trueAksak,
26 trueAksak, 10 aksak and so on.
adowa and sikyi sound identical
They are. Both carry the same eight-step pattern in the current source — see their cards above.
A jungle pattern does not line up with my other parts
All three are 32 steps, not 16. Give them a multiple of 32, and give anything running alongside them a length that divides into it.
I cannot find a rhythm I am sure exists
Clear the filter — it hides whole regions. Beyond these 31, rhythms can also be generated rather than recalled: see Euclidean patterns and hex beats in Rhythms: Advanced.
How do I list the rhythms from inside the image?
Rhythm list returns a Dictionary of every selector carrying the
<rhythmCreation> pragma, together with its comment. That pragma is also
what this page is generated from.