CUPSIZE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in следак (full)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 37, 64-70 and 72-84 -- 25% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
104 BPM
TIME
2/4
BARS
84
LENGTH
2:16
DIFFICULTY
76/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 104 BPM
СЛЕДАК (FULL) · BAR 64

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 55 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 76 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 68 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. 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 68, 80, 92 and 104 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 следак (full) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 2/4 at 104 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 25% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 37, 64-70 and 72-84. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in следак (full) hard?

55 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 76 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 84 BARS ANALYSED