AUSBORN 66 · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Middle of System

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-21 and 55-78 -- 67.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
89
LENGTH
2:58
DIFFICULTY
25/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
MIDDLE OF SYSTEM · BAR 6

It is played on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 18 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 25 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

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 90 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, and nothing else. 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 90, 105 and 120 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 Middle of System use?

A one-bar groove on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 67.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 6-21 and 55-78. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Middle of System hard?

18 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 25 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 89 BARS ANALYSED