TBP · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in metalcore riff continued

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 41-56, 109-110 and 115, and 4 more places -- 20.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
190 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
148
LENGTH
3:08
DIFFICULTY
65/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 190 BPM
METALCORE RIFF CONTINUED · BAR 42

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 20 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 143 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, ride 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 143, 166 and 190 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 metalcore riff continued use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 190 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 41-56, 109-110, 115 and 118, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in metalcore riff continued hard?

20 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 · 148 BARS ANALYSED