Lippincott 7/8 Polyrhythm — Matt Garstka (Animals as Leaders) Drum Lick | MetalForge
Learn the Lippincott 7/8 Polyrhythm drum lick by Matt Garstka of Animals as Leaders. From Lippincott (The Joy of Motion (2014)). "Lippincott" is the closing track on Animals as Leaders' 2014 album The Joy of Motion, and Matt Gars...
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1. Matt Garstka's Signature Licks — "Lippincott" is the closing track on Animals as Leaders' 2014 album The Joy of Motion, and Matt Garstka's drum performance on it is one of the most sophisticated examples of applied polyrhythm in the progressive metal canon. Named in honour of a mentor figure, the track represents a high-water mark for the band's rhythmic complexity on that record — a piece where the metre is not fixed but shifts through several feel-centres, and Garstka's job is to make those shifts feel intentional and musical rather than arbitrary or disorienting. The centrepiece of the piece is a passage built around a 7/8 polyrhythmic groove: a pattern where the kick and snare articulate a repeating seven-beat figure against the guitar's implied pulse, so the downbeat of the pattern spirals against the underlying feel and resolves only after several complete rotations. This kind of polyrhythm is fundamentally different from playing in a fixed odd time signature — it requires you to maintain two simultaneous metric references in your internal clock, following the seven-beat figure in your hands and feet while tracking where the underlying pulse sits. Garstka executes this with precision and ease that belies the difficulty of the concept, and the groove feels completely natural and musical even as the time signatures slip and resolve around it. What makes the Lippincott passage valuable as a teaching piece is that Garstka plays the polyrhythm without treating it as a mathematical puzzle: the feel remains human and flowing, and the resolution point at the end of the pattern lands like a downbeat you have been expecting rather than a calculation you have been counting toward. For drummers, "Lippincott" is the ideal study in 7-against-4 polyrhythm: it demands that you internalise both the seven-beat figure and the four-beat pulse independently, develop the foot-hand independence to sustain them simultaneously, and learn to hear the polyrhythm resolving naturally rather than counting bars of seven against bars of four. Approaching the piece patiently — clapping the figures away from the kit before playing them, identifying the resolution point, and building the pattern limb by limb — will unlock one of the most transferable advanced drumming skills: the ability to superimpose independent metric layers within a single groove.2. Matt Garstka Profile — Internalise the seven-beat pattern independently before combining it with any underlying pulse reference Count the seven-beat figure in one part of your mind while tracking the four-beat pulse in another Play the pattern until the resolution point feels natural — a moment of arrival, not a calculation Keep ghost notes between the polyrhythmic accents to maintain the groove's flow and human feel Practise the transition between the 7/8 polyrhythm and surrounding sections until it is seamless
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