BIS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Statement Of Intent

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-16, 26-36 and 70-80, and 2 more places -- 33.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
155 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
154
LENGTH
3:58
DIFFICULTY
38/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 155 BPM
STATEMENT OF INTENT · BAR 10

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 22 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many limbs land on the same note.

The whole song is 38 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 116 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 116, 136 and 155 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 Statement Of Intent use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 155 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 33.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-16, 26-36, 70-80 and 98-108, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in Statement Of Intent hard?

22 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 38 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 154 BARS ANALYSED