SMASHING PUMPKINS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Silverfuck

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 98-193 -- 45.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
131 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
236
LENGTH
7:19
DIFFICULTY
58/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 131 BPM
SILVERFUCK · BAR 98

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 19 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 58 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 98 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. 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 98, 115 and 131 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 Silverfuck use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 131 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 45.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 98-193. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in Silverfuck hard?

19 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 58 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 · 236 BARS ANALYSED