DIR EN GREY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in 業 (Karma) THE UNRAVELING (2013)

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 76-78, 80-82 and 84-86, and 5 more places -- 15.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
135 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
162
LENGTH
4:49
DIFFICULTY
70/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 135 BPM
業 (KARMA) THE UNRAVELING (2013) · BARS 76-77

It is played on crash, ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 58 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 70 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 88 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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, ride pulled back to quarter notes. 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 88, 104, 119 and 135 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 業 (Karma) THE UNRAVELING (2013) use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 135 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 76-78, 80-82, 84-86 and 88-90, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 23 times over the song.

Is the beat in 業 (Karma) THE UNRAVELING (2013) hard?

58 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 70 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 162 BARS ANALYSED