AVENGED SEVENFOLD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Malagueña Salerosa

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-26, 28-37 and 39-45, and 1 more place -- 23.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
180 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
227
LENGTH
3:57
DIFFICULTY
51/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 180 BPM
MALAGUEÑA SALEROSA · BAR 14

It is played on the snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 20 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 51 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 135 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 135, 158 and 180 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 Malagueña Salerosa use?

A one-bar groove on snare, in 3/4 at 180 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-26, 28-37, 39-45 and 59-77. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 29 times over the song.

Is the beat in Malagueña Salerosa hard?

20 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 51 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 · 227 BARS ANALYSED