VIC CHESNUTT · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Coward

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-23, 34-38 and 62-63, and 1 more place -- 22% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
57 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
79
LENGTH
5:20
DIFFICULTY
32/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 57 BPM
COWARD · BAR 21

It is played on floor tom and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 6 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 32 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 43 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 43, 50 and 57 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 Coward use?

A one-bar groove on floor tom and kick, in 4/4 at 57 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-23, 34-38, 62-63 and 78-80. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 11 times over the song.

Is the beat in Coward hard?

6 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 32 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how fine the subdivision is the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 84 BARS ANALYSED