Examples from literature

• And now once more they gave us Eastern music, awful stuff, pulsating with a distant drumbeat like the tramp of an army of devils. 
• Captain Daniels marched to the dining-room door, his gold-headed cane marking time like a drumbeat. 
• From that day the flag flew regularly over the rocky shelf, and, in time, bugles and morning drumbeats were wafted from it to the decks of passing ships. 
• Slower still they went, while the drumbeats became louder, until they seemed to fall upon their own ear-drums. 
• Through the roaring in his ears he thought he heard drumbeats, and the fanfare of a trumpet, and voices.