TWENTY ONE PILOTS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Shy Away/Heathens/Next Semester

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 201-203, 205-211 and 213-228, and 4 more places -- 15.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
194 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
458
LENGTH
9:27
DIFFICULTY
45/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 194 BPM
SHY AWAY/HEATHENS/NEXT SEMESTER · BAR 201

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 20 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 45 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 146 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 146, 170 and 194 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 Shy Away/Heathens/Next Semester use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 194 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 201-203, 205-211, 213-228 and 231-237, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 44 times over the song.

Is the beat in Shy Away/Heathens/Next Semester hard?

20 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 45 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 · 458 BARS ANALYSED