BRENT COBB · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Black creek

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-14, 22 and 46, and 10 more places -- 24.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
135
LENGTH
3:23
DIFFICULTY
18/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 160 BPM
BLACK CREEK · BAR 9

It is played on kick and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 18 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 120 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, and nothing else. 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 120, 140 and 160 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 Black creek use?

A one-bar groove on kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 160 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 9-14, 22, 46 and 50, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Black creek hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 18 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 135 BARS ANALYSED