RADIOHEAD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Ill Wind

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 2-36, 38-69 and 98-105, and 4 more places -- 78% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
147 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
129
LENGTH
3:30
DIFFICULTY
56/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 147 BPM
ILL WIND · BARS 2-3

It is played on ride, snare, high tom and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 47 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 56 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. 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 110, 129 and 147 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 Ill Wind use?

A 2-bar phrase on ride, snare, high tom and kick, in 4/4 at 147 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 78% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-36, 38-69, 98-105 and 108-109, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Ill Wind hard?

47 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 56 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 · 129 BARS ANALYSED