SODOM · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Outbreak Of Evil

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 8-26, 28 and 30, and 12 more places -- 60% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
141
LENGTH
3:31
DIFFICULTY
87/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 160 BPM
OUTBREAK OF EVIL · BAR 8

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 80 out of 100 -- hard -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 87 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 88 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  4. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 88, 106, 124, 142 and 160 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 Outbreak Of Evil use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 160 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 60% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 8-26, 28, 30 and 32, and 11 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Outbreak Of Evil hard?

80 out of 100 on its own -- hard. The song as a whole is 87 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 141 BARS ANALYSED