ASKING ALEXANDRIA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Alone Again

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 14-16, 18-20 and 28, and 4 more places -- 19.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
110 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
102
LENGTH
3:43
DIFFICULTY
46/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 110 BPM
ALONE AGAIN · BAR 14

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 11 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many limbs land on the same note.

The whole song is 46 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 83 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 83, 96 and 110 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 Alone Again use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 110 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-16, 18-20, 28 and 42-44, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in Alone Again hard?

11 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 46 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 · 102 BARS ANALYSED