IMMINENCE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in God Fearing Man

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-8, 25-40 and 42, and 2 more places -- 23% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
105 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
122
LENGTH
4:39
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 105 BPM
GOD FEARING MAN · BAR 25

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 33 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 53 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 79 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 79, 92 and 105 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 God Fearing Man use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 105 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5-8, 25-40, 42 and 44, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in God Fearing Man hard?

33 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 53 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 · 122 BARS ANALYSED