NINE INCH NAILS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Copy of a

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 11-43, 45-55 and 61-65, and 4 more places -- 77.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
138 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
185
LENGTH
5:22
DIFFICULTY
78/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 138 BPM
COPY OF A · BAR 16

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 71 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 78 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 76 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 76, 91, 107, 122 and 138 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 Copy of a use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 138 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 77.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 11-43, 45-55, 61-65 and 71-75, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Copy of a hard?

71 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 185 BARS ANALYSED