110 BPM
Drums
Bass
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4/4
Drag rhythmic values into up to 4 beat blocks per line to build a drum groove, or click a tile then click a block to place it — handy on a trackpad.
Samba took shape in Rio de Janeiro in the early 20th century, carried there largely by Afro-Brazilian migrants from Bahia, and became the sound of Rio's Carnival street parades ("samba de enredo") performed by massive percussion ensembles called baterias. This groove represents a scaled-down bateria: a syncopated surdo (bass drum) pulse on the kick, a driving sixteenth-note caixa (snare) roll, a syncopated tamborim pattern on the closed hi-hat, and the agogô bell's strong pulses on the open hi-hat — all interlocking the way dozens of drummers would in a real escola de samba.
Slot A is the core groove; switch to B, C, and D above for variations on it — a genuine stylistic twist, a busier or sparser take, and a fill or break, the same way a real performance of this rhythm would vary it. Press play to hear it, slow the tempo down to study it, or drag the beat blocks apart to see exactly how it's built.
It is free and needs no login. Nothing you change here is saved, so use it as a reference or as the starting point for a beat of your own — then open the RockBlocks drum machine to build from scratch.