HESSE KASSEL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Postparto (WIP)

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 8-10, 12-13 and 15-17, and 6 more places -- 15.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
122 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
199
LENGTH
6:46
DIFFICULTY
75/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 122 BPM
POSTPARTO (WIP) · BARS 12-13

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 67 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 75 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 67 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 67, 81, 95, 108 and 122 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 Postparto (WIP) use?

A 2-bar phrase on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 122 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 8-10, 12-13, 15-17 and 19-20, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in Postparto (WIP) hard?

67 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 75 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 199 BARS ANALYSED