JUTES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Kill or be Killed

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 15-17, 19-20 and 23, and 6 more places -- 25.4% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
168 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
106
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
43/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 168 BPM
KILL OR BE KILLED · BARS 15-16

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 27 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 43 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 126 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. 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 126, 147 and 168 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 Kill or be Killed use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, snare and kick, in 6/4 at 168 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 25.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 15-17, 19-20, 23 and 25, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Kill or be Killed hard?

27 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 43 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 106 BARS ANALYSED