CRYPTOPSY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Gravaged (A Cryptopsy)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 82-84, 86-89 and 91, and 14 more places -- 18.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
260 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
142
LENGTH
2:15
DIFFICULTY
59/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 260 BPM
GRAVAGED (A CRYPTOPSY) · BAR 91

It is played on the ride, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 21 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 59 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 195 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 195, 228 and 260 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 Gravaged (A Cryptopsy) use?

A one-bar groove on ride, in 4/4 at 260 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 82-84, 86-89, 91 and 93, and 13 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in Gravaged (A Cryptopsy) hard?

21 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 59 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 142 BARS ANALYSED