HERETOIR · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in The Ashen Falls

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 144-146, 148-149 and 152, and 12 more places -- 18.8% 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
256
LENGTH
6:24
DIFFICULTY
64/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 160 BPM
THE ASHEN FALLS · BARS 144-145

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 35 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 64 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 120 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. 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, and nothing else. 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 120, 140 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 Ashen Falls use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 160 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 144-146, 148-149, 152 and 154, and 11 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in The Ashen Falls hard?

35 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 64 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 · 256 BARS ANALYSED