THE BOYS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Terminal Love

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-32, 34-64 and 66-81, and 3 more places -- 78.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
130 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
116
LENGTH
3:34
DIFFICULTY
23/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 130 BPM
TERMINAL LOVE · BAR 2

It is played on ride and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 12 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 23 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 98 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, ride 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 98, 114 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 Terminal Love use?

A one-bar groove on ride and snare, in 4/4 at 130 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 78.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-32, 34-64, 66-81 and 98-104, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Terminal Love hard?

12 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 23 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 116 BARS ANALYSED