TREE63 · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Blessed Be Your Name

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-16, 18-19 and 78-80, and 1 more place -- 21.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
110
LENGTH
3:40
DIFFICULTY
43/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
BLESSED BE YOUR NAME · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 10 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 43 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 90 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 90, 105 and 120 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 Blessed Be Your Name use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and snare, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-16, 18-19, 78-80 and 82-84. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Blessed Be Your Name hard?

10 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 43 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 110 BARS ANALYSED