"VORBAG" VLAD VULCAN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Retreat From Relieveness

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 138-144, 146-156 and 158-160, and 13 more places -- 19.8% 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
3/4
BARS
332
LENGTH
8:57
DIFFICULTY
72/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
RETREAT FROM RELIEVENESS · BARS 138-139

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 9 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 72 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 90 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  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 Retreat From Relieveness use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 138-144, 146-156, 158-160 and 162-167, and 12 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 18 times over the song.

Is the beat in Retreat From Relieveness hard?

9 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 72 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 332 BARS ANALYSED