TANNER FITZGIBBON · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Ina Aanor

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-8 and 10-15 -- 15.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
145
LENGTH
5:00
DIFFICULTY
41/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 140 BPM
INA AANOR · BAR 1

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 41 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 105 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 105, 123 and 140 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 Ina Aanor use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 3/4 at 140 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-8 and 10-15. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Ina Aanor hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 41 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 · 145 BARS ANALYSED