BOLT THROWER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Suspect Hostile

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 73-79, 81-87 and 105-111, and 1 more place -- 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
130 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
185
LENGTH
5:42
DIFFICULTY
55/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 130 BPM
SUSPECT HOSTILE · BAR 73

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 54 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 55 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 85 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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, ride 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 85, 100, 115 and 130 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 Suspect Hostile use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 130 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 73-79, 81-87, 105-111 and 113-119. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in Suspect Hostile hard?

54 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 55 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 · 185 BARS ANALYSED