PRIMUS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 25-34, 49-51 and 53-59 -- 18% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
90 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
125
LENGTH
5:33
DIFFICULTY
70/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 90 BPM
THOSE DAMNED BLUE-COLLAR TWEEKERS · BAR 25

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 41 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 70 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 68 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 68, 79 and 90 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 Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 90 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 25-34, 49-51 and 53-59. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Those Damned Blue-Collar Tweekers hard?

41 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 70 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 125 BARS ANALYSED