ALL MY WISHES WERE THROWN DOWN A WELL AND SHOULD DIE THERE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Systemic

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 50-54, 65-66 and 68-70, and 2 more places -- 17.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
90 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
84
LENGTH
3:42
DIFFICULTY
74/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 90 BPM
SYSTEMIC · BAR 51

It is played on snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 4 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 74 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 68 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 68, 79 and 90 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 Systemic use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 90 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 50-54, 65-66, 68-70 and 74, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Systemic hard?

4 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 74 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 84 BARS ANALYSED