AGGX · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Best breakdowns in Metal history

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1, 18 and 27-40, and 5 more places -- 25% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
200 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
86
LENGTH
1:43
DIFFICULTY
62/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 200 BPM
BEST BREAKDOWNS IN METAL HISTORY · BAR 18

It is played on the hi-hat, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 62 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 150 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 150, 175 and 200 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 Best breakdowns in Metal history use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, in 4/4 at 200 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 25% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1, 18, 27-40 and 44, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Best breakdowns in Metal history hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 62 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 · 86 BARS ANALYSED