MUSE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Panic Station

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 35-41, 52-58 and 60-66, and 1 more place -- 35.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
105 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
80
LENGTH
3:01
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 105 BPM
PANIC STATION · BAR 36

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 57 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 60 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 -- 4 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, 81, 93 and 105 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 Panic Station use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 105 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 35.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 35-41, 52-58, 60-66 and 68-74. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Panic Station hard?

57 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 60 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 80 BARS ANALYSED