MARTYR (NO) · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Initium Aeternitatis

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 87-89, 93 and 95-96, and 5 more places -- 15.4% 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
213
LENGTH
4:27
DIFFICULTY
100/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 190 BPM
INITIUM AETERNITATIS · BAR 88

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 37 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 100 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

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 143 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. 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.
  2. 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 Initium Aeternitatis use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 190 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 87-89, 93, 95-96 and 99-101, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Initium Aeternitatis hard?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 215 BARS ANALYSED