ANCO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Journey Through The Valley (to The Kingdom Of Light)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27, 29 and 31-33, and 2 more places -- 17.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
110 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
73
LENGTH
2:28
DIFFICULTY
63/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 110 BPM
JOURNEY THROUGH THE VALLEY (TO THE KINGDOM OF LIGHT) · BAR 32

It is played on snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 50 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 63 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 72 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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 72, 84, 97 and 110 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 Journey Through The Valley (to The Kingdom Of Light) use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 110 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27, 29, 31-33 and 43-45, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in Journey Through The Valley (to The Kingdom Of Light) hard?

50 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 63 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 · 85 BARS ANALYSED