PINK FLOYD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Careful With That Axe, Eugene

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 20-51, 60-74 and 116-131 -- 46% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
80 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
140
LENGTH
7:00
DIFFICULTY
50/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 80 BPM
CAREFUL WITH THAT AXE, EUGENE · BAR 20

It is played on ride and snare, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 23 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 50 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 60 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, ride 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 60, 70 and 80 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 Careful With That Axe, Eugene use?

A one-bar groove on ride and snare, in 4/4 at 80 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 46% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 20-51, 60-74 and 116-131. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 11 times over the song.

Is the beat in Careful With That Axe, Eugene hard?

23 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 50 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how fine the subdivision is.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 140 BARS ANALYSED