M · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in terwc

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-5, 17 and 31-33 -- 22.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
7/4
BARS
36
LENGTH
2:05
DIFFICULTY
78/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
TERWC · BAR 3

It is played on snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 59 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 78 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 78 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 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 78, 92, 106 and 120 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 terwc use?

A one-bar groove on snare, high tom, mid tom, floor tom and kick, in 7/4 at 120 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-5, 17 and 31-33. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in terwc hard?

59 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 63 BARS ANALYSED