EXPLOSIONS IN THE SKY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in First Breath After Coma

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 30-36, 38-49 and 51-53, and 4 more places -- 46.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
61 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
67
LENGTH
4:24
DIFFICULTY
69/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 61 BPM
FIRST BREATH AFTER COMA · BAR 30

It is played on snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 62 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 69 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 40 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 40, 47, 54 and 61 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 First Breath After Coma use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 61 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 46.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 30-36, 38-49, 51-53 and 55-57, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in First Breath After Coma hard?

62 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 67 BARS ANALYSED