CONTENTION · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Inflict My Will

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-24, 68 and 72, and 3 more places -- 23.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
190 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
98
LENGTH
2:03
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 190 BPM
INFLICT MY WILL · BAR 10

It is played on hi-hat and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 6 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 53 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 143 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 143, 166 and 190 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 Inflict My Will use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and snare, in 4/4 at 190 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 9-24, 68, 72 and 74, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in Inflict My Will hard?

6 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 53 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 · 98 BARS ANALYSED