MESHUGGAH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Broken Cog

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 89-95, 97-103 and 105-106 -- 15% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
174 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
160
LENGTH
5:31
DIFFICULTY
37/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 174 BPM
BROKEN COG · BAR 89

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 24 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 37 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 131 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, and nothing else. 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 131, 152 and 174 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 Broken Cog use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 6/4 at 174 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 89-95, 97-103 and 105-106. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Broken Cog hard?

24 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 37 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 · 160 BARS ANALYSED