ME · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Random ah song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-26, 29 and 31, and 13 more places -- 23.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
150 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
133
LENGTH
3:33
DIFFICULTY
75/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 150 BPM
RANDOM AH SONG · BAR 29

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 48 out of 100 -- a step up -- 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 not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

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 113 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 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, and nothing else. 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 113, 131 and 150 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 Random ah song use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 150 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 18-26, 29, 31 and 33, and 12 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Random ah song hard?

48 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. 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 · 133 BARS ANALYSED