PROCESS: SOMETHING · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in the moon [v1]

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2, 4 and 6, and 16 more places -- 17.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
176 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
190
LENGTH
4:35
DIFFICULTY
58/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 176 BPM
THE MOON [V1] · BAR 18

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 31 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 58 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 132 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. 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 132, 154 and 176 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 moon [v1] use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 176 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2, 4, 6 and 15, and 15 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in the moon [v1] hard?

31 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 58 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 · 206 BARS ANALYSED