AMON AMARTH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in As Long As The Raven Flies

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-20, 37-68 and 73-80 -- 40% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
120
LENGTH
4:00
DIFFICULTY
52/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
AS LONG AS THE RAVEN FLIES · BAR 13

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 44 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 52 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

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.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

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 As Long As The Raven Flies use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 40% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-20, 37-68 and 73-80. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in As Long As The Raven Flies hard?

44 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. 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 · 120 BARS ANALYSED