OPETH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Blackwater Park

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3-13, 15-26 and 118-120, and 2 more places -- 17.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
90 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
242
LENGTH
10:30
DIFFICULTY
89/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 90 BPM
BLACKWATER PARK · BAR 3

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 35 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 89 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 68 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 68, 79 and 90 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 Blackwater Park use?

A one-bar groove on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 90 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 3-13, 15-26, 118-120 and 122-124, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Blackwater Park hard?

35 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 89 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 242 BARS ANALYSED