SOUNDGARDEN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Burden In My Hand

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-24 -- 21.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
91 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
111
LENGTH
4:53
DIFFICULTY
54/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 91 BPM
BURDEN IN MY HAND · BAR 1

It is played on the hi-hat, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 54 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 68 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 68, 80 and 91 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 Burden In My Hand use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, in 4/4 at 91 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-24. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 22 times over the song.

Is the beat in Burden In My Hand hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 54 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 111 BARS ANALYSED