DUSTER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Orbitron

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-4, 6-8 and 10-13, and 5 more places -- 39.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
117 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
68
LENGTH
2:12
DIFFICULTY
39/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 117 BPM
ORBITRON · BAR 1

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 10 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 39 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 88 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 88, 102 and 117 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 Orbitron use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 117 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 39.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-4, 6-8, 10-13 and 15-16, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Orbitron hard?

10 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 39 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 · 68 BARS ANALYSED