ARMOR FOR SLEEP · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Dream to Make Believe

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19-25, 27-34 and 52-58, and 1 more place -- 43.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
163 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
91
LENGTH
2:57
DIFFICULTY
40/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 163 BPM
DREAM TO MAKE BELIEVE · BAR 19

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 29 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 40 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 122 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. 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 122, 143 and 163 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 Dream to Make Believe use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 6/4 at 163 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 43.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 19-25, 27-34, 52-58 and 60-66. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Dream to Make Believe hard?

29 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 40 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 91 BARS ANALYSED