ORCHID · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in And The Cat Turned To Smoke

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 61-76 and 118-121 -- 16.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
75 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
122
LENGTH
6:30
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 75 BPM
AND THE CAT TURNED TO SMOKE · BAR 62

It is played on the ride, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 42 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 56 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 56, 66 and 75 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 And The Cat Turned To Smoke use?

A one-bar groove on ride, in 4/4 at 75 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 16.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 61-76 and 118-121. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in And The Cat Turned To Smoke hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 42 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 122 BARS ANALYSED