OPETH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in The Baying of the Hounds

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 106-112, 114-128 and 130-136, and 3 more places -- 20.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
130 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
340
LENGTH
15:42
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 130 BPM
THE BAYING OF THE HOUNDS · BAR 107

It is played on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 15 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 57 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. 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 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 The Baying of the Hounds use?

A one-bar groove on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, in 6/4 at 130 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 106-112, 114-128, 130-136 and 138-143, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 21 times over the song.

Is the beat in The Baying of the Hounds hard?

15 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 57 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 · 340 BARS ANALYSED