ASIAN KUNG-FU GENERATION · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Skins スキンズ

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-10, 21-25 and 31-32, and 4 more places -- 16.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
125 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
128
LENGTH
4:02
DIFFICULTY
69/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 125 BPM
SKINS スキンズ · BAR 6

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 60 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 69 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 81 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 81, 96, 110 and 125 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 Skins スキンズ use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 125 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 16.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 6-10, 21-25, 31-32 and 34-35, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Skins スキンズ hard?

60 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 128 BARS ANALYSED