On Brazilian Drum Claves and Generating Rhythm Patterns Out of Them

Rhythmic patterns, or claves, are fundamental to many Latin American and Caribbean music styles. Clave rhythms are used as drum patterns to provide rhythmic frameworks and are often used as the basis for improvisation. This paper introduces the theory of Brazilian claves and how they can be understood in the Western music framework based on measures. This is the first systematic ethnomusicological model ever presented for the Brazilian clave system. Moreover, we present a simple but effective genetic algorithm that generates random Brazilian-style rhythms based on the clave theory introduced.