CONAN GRAY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Maniac

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 14-20, 22-29 and 32-37, and 4 more places -- 71.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
108 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
81
LENGTH
3:00
DIFFICULTY
66/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 108 BPM
MANIAC · BAR 15

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 67 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 66 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

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 70 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. 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 70, 83, 95 and 108 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 Maniac use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 108 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 71.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-20, 22-29, 32-37 and 42-48, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Maniac hard?

67 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 66 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 81 BARS ANALYSED