AFTER FOREVER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Discord

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 22-28, 30-36 and 48-50, and 3 more places -- 20.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
136
LENGTH
4:31
DIFFICULTY
76/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
DISCORD · BAR 23

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 68 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 76 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 78 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. 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.
  2. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 78, 92, 106 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 Discord use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 22-28, 30-36, 48-50 and 52-54, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Discord hard?

68 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 76 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 136 BARS ANALYSED