RUSH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Distant Early Warning

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 4-5, 7-9 and 11-13, and 14 more places -- 19.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
144 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
179
LENGTH
4:48
DIFFICULTY
56/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 144 BPM
DISTANT EARLY WARNING · BAR 4

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 17 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 56 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 108 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. 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 108, 126 and 144 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 Distant Early Warning use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 144 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 4-5, 7-9, 11-13 and 15, and 13 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Distant Early Warning hard?

17 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 56 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 179 BARS ANALYSED