drumming vs rat-a-tat

drumming

noun
  • A noise resembling that of a drum being beaten. 

  • In many species of catfish, the sound produced by contraction of specialized sonic muscles with subsequent reverberation through the swim bladder. 

  • The act of beating a drum. 

rat-a-tat

How often have the words drumming and rat-a-tat occurred in a corpus of books? (source: Google Ngram Viewer )