SYSTEM OF A DOWN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Aerials (A Bass)

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 51-55, 57-59 and 61-63, and 7 more places -- 24.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
203 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
151
LENGTH
2:59
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 203 BPM
AERIALS (A BASS) · BARS 51-52

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 36 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 57 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 152 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, hi-hat 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 152, 178 and 203 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 Aerials (A Bass) use?

A 2-bar phrase on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 203 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 51-55, 57-59, 61-63 and 123-127, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Aerials (A Bass) hard?

36 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 57 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 151 BARS ANALYSED