TYCHO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Awake

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 41, 43-56 and 65-105, and 9 more places -- 59.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
176 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
202
LENGTH
4:35
DIFFICULTY
43/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 176 BPM
AWAKE · BAR 41

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 35 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 43 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 132 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, hi-hat 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 132, 154 and 176 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 Awake use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 176 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 59.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 41, 43-56, 65-105 and 107-109, and 8 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Awake hard?

35 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 43 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 · 202 BARS ANALYSED