ALIEN SEX FIEND · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in i walk the line

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 15-38, 43-55 and 58-68, and 8 more places -- 71.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
124 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
148
LENGTH
4:45
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 124 BPM
I WALK THE LINE · BAR 22

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 42 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 93 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, hi-hat 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 93, 109 and 124 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 i walk the line use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 124 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 71.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 15-38, 43-55, 58-68 and 71, and 7 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in i walk the line hard?

30 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 42 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 148 BARS ANALYSED