SLIPKNOT · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Eyeless

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 111-113, 115-116 and 119-121, and 12 more places -- 19.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
224 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
194
LENGTH
3:27
DIFFICULTY
61/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 224 BPM
EYELESS · BARS 111-112

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 39 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 61 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 168 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 168, 196 and 224 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 Eyeless use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 224 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 111-113, 115-116, 119-121 and 123-125, and 11 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 22 times over the song.

Is the beat in Eyeless hard?

39 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 61 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 · 194 BARS ANALYSED