GRAVEYARD PUPPETS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in AMBIENCE

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-5, 13-17 and 40, and 3 more places -- 24.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
91
LENGTH
3:02
DIFFICULTY
23/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
AMBIENCE · BAR 1

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 13 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 23 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 90 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.

Tempo goes 90, 105 and 120 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 AMBIENCE use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-5, 13-17, 40 and 43, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in AMBIENCE hard?

13 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 23 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 91 BARS ANALYSED