AVENGED SEVENFOLD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Bat Country (Live) [Fixed Solo]

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 49-62 and 129-142 -- 17.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
159
LENGTH
5:18
DIFFICULTY
73/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
BAT COUNTRY (LIVE) [FIXED SOLO] · BAR 49

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 11 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 73 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 90 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 Bat Country (Live) [Fixed Solo] use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 49-62 and 129-142. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in Bat Country (Live) [Fixed Solo] hard?

11 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 73 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 159 BARS ANALYSED