BUCKETHEAD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Night Of The Slunk

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-32, 49-64 and 77-96, and 1 more place -- 61.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
124 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
168
LENGTH
5:25
DIFFICULTY
41/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 124 BPM
NIGHT OF THE SLUNK · BAR 17

It is played on crash, snare, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 33 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 41 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 93 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 93, 109 and 124 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 Night Of The Slunk use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare, kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 124 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 61.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 17-32, 49-64, 77-96 and 137-168. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Night Of The Slunk hard?

33 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 41 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 · 168 BARS ANALYSED