PRIME CIRCLE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Evidence (Rock Version)

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 10-16, 18-23 and 42-48, and 1 more place -- 20.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
172 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
130
LENGTH
3:01
DIFFICULTY
47/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 172 BPM
EVIDENCE (ROCK VERSION) · BARS 10-11

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 37 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 47 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 129 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. 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 129, 151 and 172 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 Evidence (Rock Version) use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 172 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-16, 18-23, 42-48 and 50-55. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Evidence (Rock Version) hard?

37 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 47 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 · 130 BARS ANALYSED