OZMA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Domino Effect

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 40-61, 64-68 and 72-74, and 1 more place -- 33.3% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
156 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
132
LENGTH
3:23
DIFFICULTY
49/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 156 BPM
DOMINO EFFECT · BAR 41

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 41 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 49 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 117 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. 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 117, 137 and 156 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 Domino Effect use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 156 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 33.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 40-61, 64-68, 72-74 and 77-87. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Domino Effect hard?

41 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 49 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 · 132 BARS ANALYSED