ASKING ALEXANDRIA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Bad Blood

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 45-51, 93-99 and 145-147 -- 15% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
180 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
149
LENGTH
3:19
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 180 BPM
BAD BLOOD · BAR 45

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 49 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 57 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 117 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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 117, 138, 159 and 180 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 Bad Blood use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 180 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 45-51, 93-99 and 145-147. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Bad Blood hard?

49 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. 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 · 149 BARS ANALYSED