NIGHTMARE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Alumina

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 114-128, 130-144 and 146-158, and 2 more places -- 28.2% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
185 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
243
LENGTH
4:53
DIFFICULTY
52/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 185 BPM
ALUMINA · BAR 115

It is played on ride and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 5 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 52 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 139 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, ride pulled back to quarter notes. 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 139, 162 and 185 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 Alumina use?

A one-bar groove on ride and snare, in 4/4 at 185 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 28.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 114-128, 130-144, 146-158 and 160-170, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 19 times over the song.

Is the beat in Alumina hard?

5 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 52 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 · 243 BARS ANALYSED