ESOPHAGUS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Killing for Sport

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-24, 29-32 and 43-46, and 2 more places -- 54.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
91
LENGTH
2:36
DIFFICULTY
80/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 140 BPM
KILLING FOR SPORT · BAR 17

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 19 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 80 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 105 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

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

Tempo goes 105, 123 and 140 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 Killing for Sport use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 140 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 54.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-24, 29-32, 43-46 and 51-65, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Killing for Sport hard?

19 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 80 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 91 BARS ANALYSED