This eight-bar drumset exercise superimposes a grouping of five eight notes (with a RLRLL sticking) over the traditional Brazilian baião bass drum ostinato pattern. It may be used when soloing during a baião or as an independence exercise. The difficulty lies in creating a true feeling of 5/8 in the hands while maintaining the accent pattern on the bass drum. Whenever superimposing "odd groupings" of notes over symmetrical phrase lengths (e.g., four or eight bars), it is necessary to play a few extra notes at the end of the phrase (known as the "remainder") in order to have the phrase resolve on beat one of the next phrase.

Terry O'Mahoney is Associate Professor of Music at St. Francis Xavier University (Antigonish, Nova Scotia).