BETHLEHEM · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Kalt' Ritt in leicht faltiger Leere

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-12, 14-16 and 100-106, and 3 more places -- 27.4% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
150 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
217
LENGTH
5:36
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 150 BPM
KALT' RITT IN LEICHT FALTIGER LEERE · BAR 10

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 49 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 57 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 98 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 98, 115, 133 and 150 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 Kalt' Ritt in leicht faltiger Leere use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 150 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 27.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-12, 14-16, 100-106 and 108-114, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 22 times over the song.

Is the beat in Kalt' Ritt in leicht faltiger Leere hard?

49 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 57 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 · 217 BARS ANALYSED