WHIRR · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Collect Sadness

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 114-160 -- 24.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
150 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
194
LENGTH
5:10
DIFFICULTY
36/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 150 BPM
COLLECT SADNESS · BAR 130

It is played on ride and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many limbs land on the same note.

The whole song is 36 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 113 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, ride 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 113, 131 and 150 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 Collect Sadness use?

A one-bar groove on ride and kick, in 4/4 at 150 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 114-160. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Collect Sadness hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 36 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 · 194 BARS ANALYSED