LIAM SACHE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Fragile Doll

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-31 and 33 -- 24.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
57 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
134
LENGTH
9:34
DIFFICULTY
69/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 57 BPM
FRAGILE DOLL · BAR 1

It is played on the snare, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 23 out of 100 -- straightforward -- 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 not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

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 43 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 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 43, 50 and 57 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 Fragile Doll use?

A one-bar groove on snare, in 3/4 at 57 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-31 and 33. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Fragile Doll hard?

23 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. 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 · 134 BARS ANALYSED