L'ARC〜EN〜CIEL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Blurry Eyes

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 31-36, 38-39 and 41-44, and 8 more places -- 17.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
195 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
209
LENGTH
4:13
DIFFICULTY
59/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 195 BPM
BLURRY EYES · BAR 31

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 57 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 59 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 127 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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 127, 150, 172 and 195 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 Blurry Eyes use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 195 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 31-36, 38-39, 41-44 and 59-64, and 7 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 29 times over the song.

Is the beat in Blurry Eyes hard?

57 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 59 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 209 BARS ANALYSED