GOJIRA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in The Gift Of Guilt

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-25, 27-38 and 58-66, and 19 more places -- 48.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
158 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
221
LENGTH
5:35
DIFFICULTY
69/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 158 BPM
THE GIFT OF GUILT · BAR 17

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 20 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 69 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 119 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 119, 138 and 158 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 Gift Of Guilt use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 158 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 48.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 17-25, 27-38, 58-66 and 68-71, and 18 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in The Gift Of Guilt hard?

20 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how fine the subdivision is.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 221 BARS ANALYSED