ANGRA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Running Alone

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 59-65, 67-71 and 74-88, and 2 more places -- 41.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
152 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
258
LENGTH
6:46
DIFFICULTY
50/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 152 BPM
RUNNING ALONE · BAR 59

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 46 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 50 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 114 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 114, 133 and 152 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 Running Alone use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 152 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 41.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 59-65, 67-71, 74-88 and 90-120, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Running Alone hard?

46 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 50 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 258 BARS ANALYSED