METALLICA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in The Outlaw Torn

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21, 27 and 53, and 1 more place -- 15.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
60 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
146
LENGTH
9:44
DIFFICULTY
78/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 60 BPM
THE OUTLAW TORN · BAR 114

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 50 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 78 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 45 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. 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 45, 53 and 60 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 Outlaw Torn use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 60 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 15.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21, 27, 53 and 114-132. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 12 times over the song.

Is the beat in The Outlaw Torn hard?

50 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 78 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 146 BARS ANALYSED