ATHGOWLA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Ordained Fall

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27-29, 31-33 and 35-37, and 5 more places -- 18.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
200 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
155
LENGTH
3:35
DIFFICULTY
51/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 200 BPM
ORDAINED FALL · BAR 28

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 16 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 51 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 150 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 150, 175 and 200 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 Ordained Fall use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 200 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27-29, 31-33, 35-37 and 39-41, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 18 times over the song.

Is the beat in Ordained Fall hard?

16 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 51 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 155 BARS ANALYSED