DREW · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Cursed Moon (new)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-23, 25-27 and 29-31, and 17 more places -- 35.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
173
LENGTH
5:46
DIFFICULTY
78/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
CURSED MOON (NEW) · BAR 21

It is played on crash, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 74 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

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 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, and nothing else. 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 Cursed Moon (new) use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 35.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-23, 25-27, 29-31 and 33-35, and 16 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in Cursed Moon (new) hard?

74 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 · 173 BARS ANALYSED