PIERCE THE VEIL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Hold On Till May

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 81-96 and 145-151 -- 16.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
146 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
153
LENGTH
4:12
DIFFICULTY
52/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 146 BPM
HOLD ON TILL MAY · BARS 81-82

It is played on crash, ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 15 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how often it moves around the kit.

The whole song is 52 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 110 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 110, 128 and 146 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 Hold On Till May use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 146 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 16.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 81-96 and 145-151. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Hold On Till May hard?

15 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 52 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