RAGE AGAINST THE MACHINE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Calm Like a Bomb

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-41, 46 and 50, and 10 more places -- 84.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
149 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
185
LENGTH
4:59
DIFFICULTY
38/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 149 BPM
CALM LIKE A BOMB · BAR 10

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 21 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 38 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 112 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, and nothing else. 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 112, 130 and 149 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 Calm Like a Bomb use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 149 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 84.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-41, 46, 50 and 54, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Calm Like a Bomb hard?

21 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 38 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 · 185 BARS ANALYSED