BACKFIRE! · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Fight Or Run

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 1, 3 and 5, and 6 more places -- 58% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
81
LENGTH
2:02
DIFFICULTY
19/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 160 BPM
FIGHT OR RUN · BARS 10-11

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 14 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 19 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 120 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 120, 140 and 160 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 Fight Or Run use?

A 2-bar phrase on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 160 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 58% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1, 3, 5 and 7, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Fight Or Run hard?

14 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 · 81 BARS ANALYSED