INSOMNIACKS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Sempurna

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 7, 9 and 11, and 14 more places -- 15.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
137 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
126
LENGTH
2:46
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 137 BPM
SEMPURNA · BAR 9

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 16 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 53 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 103 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. 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 103, 120 and 137 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 Sempurna use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 3/4 at 137 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 7, 9, 11 and 13, and 13 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in Sempurna hard?

16 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 53 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 · 126 BARS ANALYSED