Whether you're an acoustic kit player or a drum machine programmer, this column's for you! We've invited Warren Cann, our consultant drummer with the internationally known group Ultravox, to get our readers trying out rhythms with their Syntoms, Synwaves, Hexadrums, Electric Drummers, micros and skins. Here's the first one of the series which contains Warren's own drum rhythm ideas that he's used.

"Hi, it's a great pleasure to be able to reach so many of today's (and tomorrow's) electro-musicians through this column. I'll be covering a very wide range of rhythms that I've used in my playing and in this first part I'll obviously be commencing with some basic beats for you to experiment with.

"All the examples will be available shortly on a narrated cassette for you to have alongside the music and I've added comments on each example below for rhythms that have a disco beat. Try them all!"

1. The disco beat! 4 to the measure on the bass drum, snare on the 2 and 4, and eights on the high-hat. This beat fits just about anything and everything (as all of the 'Stars on 45' type tracks attest). Don't feel it's beneath you because it's so simple - that's its greatest virtue.


2. An interesting variation of 1. The bass drum plays only on the 1 & 3. Not having a bass drum underpinning the snare gives more of push-pull effect to the beat. The high-hat is playing 1/4 notes on the off-beat and this type of high-hat pattern really kicks any beat along.


3. The disco beat (1) again but with 16's on the high-hat. The bass drum and snare drum fit almost anything, but adding this high-hat part tends to be too busy if used throughout an entire song. It's ideal for, say, a chorus where you want things to lift.


4. Same as 3 but with an added bassdrum beat on the '4 and', a subtle variation that pushes the beat along more.