JUDAS PRIEST · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Angel

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27-34 -- 21.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
78 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
60
LENGTH
3:05
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 78 BPM
ANGEL · BAR 28

It is played on the ride, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 3 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

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 59 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 59, 68 and 78 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 Angel use?

A one-bar groove on ride, in 4/4 at 78 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27-34. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Angel hard?

3 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. 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 · 60 BARS ANALYSED