THREE DAYS GRACE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Mayday

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-21, 23 and 25, and 6 more places -- 19% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
123 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
100
LENGTH
3:15
DIFFICULTY
56/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 123 BPM
MAYDAY · BAR 13

It is played on hi-hat and snare, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 21 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 56 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 92 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. 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 92, 108 and 123 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 Mayday use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and snare, in 4/4 at 123 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-21, 23, 25 and 37-39, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Mayday hard?

21 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 56 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 · 100 BARS ANALYSED