(With apologies to the Gershwin brothers) In my quest to build a drum machine, don’t think I really understand musical rhythm and “beats” well enough. Some resources and random thoughts…

Books

Sethares, Rhythm and Transforms — “How can we build a device that can “tap its foot” along with the music?” previously mentioned
Toussaint, Geometry of Musical Rhythm – previously mentioned in relationship to the author’s discovery of Euclidean rhythms.
Montfort, Ancient Traditions - Future Possibilities: Rhymic Training Through the Traditions of Agrica, Bali and India – looks cool and emphasizes practice (no instruments required). Would be fun to take a class on this with some people or form a study group
Anderson Learn Konnakol / Shortcut to Nirvana — acclaimed western intro to Konnakol
- Or its western cousin Takadimi—essentially solfeggio for rhythm

Learnings…

Drums have notes: I used to think drums were dumb things you hit. But of course, they have some fundamental frequency and thus can be tuned to different “notes”. For example, apparently Prince tuned his drums to the fundamental of the song key.