DARKTHRONE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in In the Shadow of the Horns

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 138-144, 146-152 and 154-160, and 4 more places -- 20.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
108 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
223
LENGTH
8:05
DIFFICULTY
89/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 108 BPM
IN THE SHADOW OF THE HORNS · BAR 139

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 82 out of 100 -- hard -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 89 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 59 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 59, 72, 84, 96 and 108 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 In the Shadow of the Horns use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 108 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 138-144, 146-152, 154-160 and 178-184, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in In the Shadow of the Horns hard?

82 out of 100 on its own -- hard. The song as a whole is 89 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 223 BARS ANALYSED