GEESE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Islands of Men

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 7-45 -- 18.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
143 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
221
LENGTH
6:11
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 143 BPM
ISLANDS OF MEN · BAR 7

It is played on the hi-hat, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 60 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 107 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.

Tempo goes 107, 125 and 143 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 Islands of Men use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, in 4/4 at 143 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 7-45. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Islands of Men hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 60 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 · 221 BARS ANALYSED