SKELETAL REMAINS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Ripprerology (V2)

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 84-90, 92-94 and 96-98, and 10 more places -- 15.3% 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
269
LENGTH
7:37
DIFFICULTY
67/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
RIPPREROLOGY (V2) · BARS 84-85

It is played on crash, ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 22 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 67 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, ride 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 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 Ripprerology (V2) use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, ride, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 120 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 84-90, 92-94, 96-98 and 144-145, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 25 times over the song.

Is the beat in Ripprerology (V2) hard?

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

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 269 BARS ANALYSED