DREDG · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Bug Eyes

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 21-36 and 61-76 -- 19.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
165 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
171
LENGTH
4:09
DIFFICULTY
52/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 165 BPM
BUG EYES · BARS 21-22

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 29 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how often it moves around the kit.

The whole song is 52 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 124 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. 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 124, 144 and 165 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 Bug Eyes use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 165 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-36 and 61-76. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Bug Eyes hard?

29 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 52 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 · 171 BARS ANALYSED