BLINK-182 · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Roller Coaster

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 39-46, 111-118 and 127-133, and 1 more place -- 23.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
232 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
147
LENGTH
2:32
DIFFICULTY
56/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 232 BPM
ROLLER COASTER · BAR 127

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 31 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 56 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

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 174 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, 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 174, 203 and 232 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 Roller Coaster use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 232 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 39-46, 111-118, 127-133 and 135-142. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Roller Coaster hard?

31 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 56 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 147 BARS ANALYSED