VOLA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in 24 light years (D & B)

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 14-26, 28-42 and 44-46, and 9 more places -- 32.6% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
142 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
157
LENGTH
4:25
DIFFICULTY
39/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 142 BPM
24 LIGHT YEARS (D & B) · BARS 14-15

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 25 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 39 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 107 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 of them. Nothing is a matter of opinion: each rung has a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next one.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 107, 124 and 142 BPM, and the gate at each one is 8 loops in a row with no wrong note and no wobble in the time.

PRACTISE THIS BEAT →

Questions

What drum beat does 24 light years (D & B) use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 142 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 32.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-26, 28-42, 44-46 and 48, and 8 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in 24 light years (D & B) hard?

25 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 39 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 157 BARS ANALYSED