MALEVOLENT · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Machinations of the Star Angels

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-32, 34-36 and 38-40, and 10 more places -- 15.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
280 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
170
LENGTH
2:47
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 280 BPM
MACHINATIONS OF THE STAR ANGELS · BAR 18

It is played on crash and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 11 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 60 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 210 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 210, 245 and 280 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 Machinations of the Star Angels use?

A one-bar groove on crash and kick, in 6/4 at 280 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 18-32, 34-36, 38-40 and 42-44, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Machinations of the Star Angels hard?

11 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 60 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 · 255 BARS ANALYSED