BULLET FOR MY VALENTINE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Knives

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 31-33, 35-37 and 53-55, and 7 more places -- 21.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
136 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
142
LENGTH
4:11
DIFFICULTY
65/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 136 BPM
KNIVES · BAR 31

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 8 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 65 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 102 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 102, 119 and 136 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 Knives use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 136 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 31-33, 35-37, 53-55 and 57-59, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Knives hard?

8 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 65 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 142 BARS ANALYSED