Rhythms › Latin American rhythms
Surdo / bass drum 1 (e &) a 2 (e &) a
Learn first Lesson 6: Eighth and sixteenth combinations Lesson 7: Syncopation and ties
Bossa nova (Portuguese for 'new trend') is the soft, syncopated style of samba that took shape in Rio de Janeiro in the late 1950s around João Gilberto, Antônio Carlos Jobim and their circle. On the drum kit, this two-bar figure is usually played as a cross-stick, or rim click, on the snare drum, over a bass drum part taken from the surdo, the large bass drum of samba.
On paper the pattern looks like son clave with one change: the last stroke is delayed by one pulse, so the two-side is pushed off the beat. It is often called the bossa nova clave or Brazilian clave, but Jobim reportedly regarded it as a rhythmic motif rather than a guide pattern, and some teachers point out that Brazilian music has no clave in the Cuban sense. In Brazil it is written in 2/4 with sixteenth notes, as here, with the click on the two main beats. North American charts usually write it in cut time with eighth notes.
| Pattern | Count |
|---|---|
| Surdo / bass drum | 1 (e &) a 2 (e &) a |
| Bossa nova pattern (2/4) | 1 (e &) a (2 e) & (a) | (1 e) & (a 2) e (& a) |
| Same pattern in cut-time eighths | 1 (& 2) & (3 &) 4 (&) | (1 &) 2 (& 3) & (4 &) |
João Gilberto's guitar style condensed the samba percussion section onto one instrument: his thumb took the part of the surdo while his fingers played syncopated chords modelled on the tamborim, a small frame drum. Drummers translated that texture back to the kit, with the bass drum on the surdo figure and the snare rim on the syncopated part. Toussaint shows that the bossa nova pattern is one rotation of an evenly spread rhythm of five strokes in sixteen pulses (gaps of 3, 3, 4, 3, 3), and notes that musicians also start it at other points in the cycle.
Bossa nova, like samba, is felt in two beats per 2/4 bar. The surdo and bass drum mark those beats, each with a short pickup on the last sixteenth before it, and the rim pattern floats above them. Keep the click as your surdo and let the rim strokes fall between its beats. The second bar has no stroke on either beat, which is exactly what gives the pattern its lift.
Names are used loosely here. Rhythm Notes calls this cross-stick figure a partido alto rhythm, while other sources reserve that name for a different seven-stroke samba pattern (see the partido alto page). The 3-2 and 2-3 labels, borrowed from Cuban music, are not traditionally used in Brazil. The most common mistake is slipping back into son clave by putting the last stroke on beat 2; the second is rushing, which turns a relaxed groove into something nervous.