KING GIZZARD & THE LIZARD WIZARD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Crumbling Castle

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-27, 30-39 and 165-174, and 2 more places -- 15.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
192 BPM
TIME
5/4
BARS
410
LENGTH
10:03
DIFFICULTY
44/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 192 BPM
CRUMBLING CASTLE · BAR 18

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 37 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 44 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

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 144 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. 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.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 144, 168 and 192 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 Crumbling Castle use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 5/4 at 192 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 18-27, 30-39, 165-174 and 291-300, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 30 times over the song.

Is the beat in Crumbling Castle hard?

37 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 44 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 410 BARS ANALYSED