BLACK SABBATH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Computer God

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 59, 93-99 and 101-107, and 11 more places -- 35.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
92 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
175
LENGTH
7:35
DIFFICULTY
48/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 92 BPM
COMPUTER GOD · BAR 93

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 35 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 48 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 69 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 69, 81 and 92 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 Computer God use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 92 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 35.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 59, 93-99, 101-107 and 109, and 10 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in Computer God hard?

35 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 48 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 · 175 BARS ANALYSED