Internal rhythm structure

Back to drumming. The following is part of my response to a post on tribe.net about rhythms; what they are called and how to play them. I've been working with one of my students a lot on keeping the integrity of the internal pulse structure both when playing basic beat and when improvising. Here it is:

"Here's a few points of view triggered by a couple of talks I had with Reda Darwish and that Faisal, Tobias and I have had some discussion about. You could actually play any rhythm just with doums or teks on the pulses in the rhythm structure if they are correctly placed. In other words while the predominate way to explain (and unfortunately play) saidi is DT-DD-T-, this is incorrect. Likewise to do the same with maqsoum and play it DT-TD-T- brings you to a similar circumstance. The internal structures do not always fall exactly on the beat, depending on how you count them out.

You could very easily play what is usually considered a maqsoum pattern and actually be playing baladi. You can play maqsoum and use two doums to start off and not be playing baladi. It is highly unlikely that the chops you have worked out in either maqsoum or baladi will actually fit in saidi if you are playing saidi correctly."