PESTE NOIRE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in J’avais rêvé du nord

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9, 13 and 17, and 15 more places -- 24.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
128 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
81
LENGTH
2:32
DIFFICULTY
11/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 128 BPM
J’AVAIS RÊVÉ DU NORD · BAR 9

It is played on floor tom and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 9 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 11 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

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 96 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 96, 112 and 128 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 J’avais rêvé du nord use?

A one-bar groove on floor tom and kick, in 4/4 at 128 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 9, 13, 17 and 21, and 14 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in J’avais rêvé du nord hard?

9 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 11 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 81 BARS ANALYSED