ALTERNATIVE COMPETITION 7 · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Prisoners

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 8-11 and 27-37 -- 22.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
80
LENGTH
2:41
DIFFICULTY
41/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
PRISONERS · BARS 8-9

It is played on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 40 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 41 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 90 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. 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 90, 105 and 120 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 Prisoners use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, mid tom, floor tom and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 8-11 and 27-37. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in Prisoners hard?

40 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 41 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 85 BARS ANALYSED