PINK FLOYD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in On The Turning Away

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 68-70, 72-74 and 76-78, and 7 more places -- 30.2% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
90 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
107
LENGTH
4:51
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 90 BPM
ON THE TURNING AWAY · BAR 69

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 34 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 42 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 68 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 68, 79 and 90 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 On The Turning Away use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 90 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 30.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 68-70, 72-74, 76-78 and 80-82, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in On The Turning Away hard?

34 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 42 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 · 107 BARS ANALYSED