JEROME · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Eat The Gun

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 12, 16 and 20, and 11 more places -- 15.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
255 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
237
LENGTH
3:43
DIFFICULTY
41/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 255 BPM
EAT THE GUN · BAR 12

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 24 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 41 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 191 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 191, 223 and 255 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 Eat The Gun use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 255 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 12, 16, 20 and 24, and 10 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Eat The Gun hard?

24 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 41 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 · 237 BARS ANALYSED