FLESHWATER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Baldpate Driver

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 4, 6 and 8, and 19 more places -- 16.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
130 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
131
LENGTH
4:02
DIFFICULTY
44/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 130 BPM
BALDPATE DRIVER · BAR 4

It is played on ride and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 1 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how often it moves around the kit.

The whole song is 44 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 98 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, ride 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 98, 114 and 130 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 Baldpate Driver use?

A one-bar groove on ride and snare, in 4/4 at 130 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 16.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 4, 6, 8 and 10, and 18 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Baldpate Driver hard?

1 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 44 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 · 131 BARS ANALYSED