Billy Martin's Riddim book tour 

You are correct! Inspired by Hardigan's book - I (illy B ) was. But Riddim is a super personal approach with a wider range of uses for all to take beyond my wildest dreams ( I hope). Riddim is not based on one specific culture but the pan-cultural migration of rhythmic patterns.

Dare I say the inspiration for this book was Royal Hartigan's West African Rhythms for Drumset. One of Billy Martin's all time faves.

still love it!!

I love, love, love this video. Every time I watch it I feel the synapses in my brain sizzling. I see links to history, genealogy, language, etc. I'm a teacher in New York City (math and Theory of Knowledge) and it's stuff like that gets me through the school year. Anyway, I have a question for Mr. Martin if he's still checking these comments. Do you think these patterns you've sketched out would make any sense to the original drummers? In other words, when the pattern shows a dot representing a 16th note rest, the traditional drummer is thinking "rest a quarter beat here" or something similar in their own head. Your notational system is clearly a form of translation, a way to help western drummers make sense of what African-influenced drummers seem to understand intuitively. Underneath that intuition, however, is there a counting system that keeps the universal "time" of the song?

that song at 3:25, i want it!

Catechism for 808 programmers.