CUPSIZE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in шАхАшАхA

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 14-15, 17-19 and 21-23, and 7 more places -- 42.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
117 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
84
LENGTH
2:52
DIFFICULTY
89/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 117 BPM
ШАХАШАХA · BAR 15

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 75 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 89 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 64 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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, ride pulled back to quarter notes. 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 64, 78, 91, 104 and 117 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 шАхАшАхA use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 117 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 42.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-15, 17-19, 21-23 and 25-27, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in шАхАшАхA hard?

75 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 89 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 84 BARS ANALYSED