GHOST IN THE MIRROR · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Static in Screams

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 11, 13 and 15, and 36 more places -- 21.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
156 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
202
LENGTH
5:11
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 156 BPM
STATIC IN SCREAMS · BAR 11

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 28 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 42 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 117 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, and nothing else. 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 117, 137 and 156 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 Static in Screams use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 156 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 11, 13, 15 and 35, and 35 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 20 times over the song.

Is the beat in Static in Screams hard?

28 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 42 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 · 202 BARS ANALYSED