TOBIAS DRAY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in HMU (ver. 2)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27-39 -- 20.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
162 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
80
LENGTH
1:59
DIFFICULTY
64/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 162 BPM
HMU (VER. 2) · BAR 27

It is played on the kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 64 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 122 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.

Tempo goes 122, 142 and 162 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 HMU (ver. 2) use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 4/4 at 162 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27-39. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in HMU (ver. 2) hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 64 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 · 80 BARS ANALYSED