FIT FOR AN AUTOPSY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Black Mammoth

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 51-56, 58-64 and 66, and 3 more places -- 20.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
138 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
144
LENGTH
4:10
DIFFICULTY
68/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 138 BPM
BLACK MAMMOTH · BAR 52

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 19 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 68 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 104 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 104, 121 and 138 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 Mammoth use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 138 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 51-56, 58-64, 66 and 85-90, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Black Mammoth hard?

19 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 144 BARS ANALYSED