6LACK · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in elephant in the room

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-15, 17-20 and 41-45, and 5 more places -- 29.7% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
180 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
169
LENGTH
3:25
DIFFICULTY
19/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 180 BPM
ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM · BAR 2

It is played on the hi-hat, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 10 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 19 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 135 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 135, 158 and 180 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 elephant in the room use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, in 4/4 at 180 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 29.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-15, 17-20, 41-45 and 47-50, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in elephant in the room hard?

10 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 19 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 169 BARS ANALYSED