DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in "Black Sun"

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1, 3 and 5, and 26 more places -- 31.2% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
88 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
101
LENGTH
4:35
DIFFICULTY
38/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 88 BPM
"BLACK SUN" · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 31 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 38 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 66 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. 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. 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 66, 77 and 88 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 Sun" use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 88 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 31.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1, 3, 5 and 7, and 25 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in "Black Sun" hard?

31 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 38 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 · 101 BARS ANALYSED