PAVEMENT · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Grounded

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10, 12 and 14, and 13 more places -- 18.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
135 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
153
LENGTH
4:32
DIFFICULTY
46/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 135 BPM
GROUNDED · BAR 42

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 22 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 46 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 101 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, ride 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 101, 118 and 135 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 Grounded use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 135 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10, 12, 14 and 16, and 12 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 25 times over the song.

Is the beat in Grounded hard?

22 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 46 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 · 153 BARS ANALYSED