PHANTOM BAND · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Hellbound

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 24-31, 33-51 and 53-59, and 7 more places -- 44.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
210 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
288
LENGTH
5:26
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 210 BPM
HELLBOUND · BAR 24

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 53 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 60 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 137 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 137, 161, 186 and 210 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 Hellbound use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 210 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 44.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 24-31, 33-51, 53-59 and 61, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 21 times over the song.

Is the beat in Hellbound hard?

53 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 60 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 · 319 BARS ANALYSED