DADAROMA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Risley Circus

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-11, 13-15 and 31, and 9 more places -- 27.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
135 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
142
LENGTH
4:12
DIFFICULTY
71/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 135 BPM
RISLEY CIRCUS · BAR 10

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 24 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 71 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 101 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, and nothing else. 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 101, 118 and 135 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 Risley Circus use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 135 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 27.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-11, 13-15, 31 and 35, and 8 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Risley Circus hard?

24 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 71 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 142 BARS ANALYSED