CHOKING VICTIM · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Crack Rock Steady

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 53-59, 61-67 and 101-107, and 1 more place -- 18.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
200 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
149
LENGTH
2:59
DIFFICULTY
51/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 200 BPM
CRACK ROCK STEADY · BAR 53

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 51 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 150 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 150, 175 and 200 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 Crack Rock Steady use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 200 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 53-59, 61-67, 101-107 and 109-115. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Crack Rock Steady hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 51 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 149 BARS ANALYSED