PINK FLOYD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in The Dark Side of the Moon (Side 1)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 63-225 -- 46.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
64 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
373
LENGTH
23:28
DIFFICULTY
52/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 64 BPM
THE DARK SIDE OF THE MOON (SIDE 1) · BAR 63

It is played on hi-hat and floor tom, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 6 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 52 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 48 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, hi-hat 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 48, 56 and 64 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 Dark Side of the Moon (Side 1) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and floor tom, in 4/4 at 64 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 46.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 63-225. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in The Dark Side of the Moon (Side 1) hard?

6 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 52 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how fine the subdivision is.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 373 BARS ANALYSED