ANTIPIG · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in The Absolute Terrorist

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 34, 36-39 and 41-42, and 8 more places -- 22.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
160 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
186
LENGTH
4:49
DIFFICULTY
86/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 160 BPM
THE ABSOLUTE TERRORIST · BAR 34

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 88 out of 100 -- hard -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 86 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

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 88 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 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. 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 88, 106, 124, 142 and 160 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 The Absolute Terrorist use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 160 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 34, 36-39, 41-42 and 44-46, and 7 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in The Absolute Terrorist hard?

88 out of 100 on its own -- hard. The song as a whole is 86 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 186 BARS ANALYSED