ALPHA CURRENT · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Crusaders Of Avalon

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-41 and 52-67 -- 71.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
68
LENGTH
2:16
DIFFICULTY
82/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
CRUSADERS OF AVALON · BAR 21

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 77 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 82 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 66 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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, hi-hat 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 66, 80, 93, 107 and 120 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 Crusaders Of Avalon use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 71.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-41 and 52-67. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Crusaders Of Avalon hard?

77 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 82 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 68 BARS ANALYSED