ERIC JOHNSON · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Trademark

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-8, 10-36 and 38-40, and 1 more place -- 95.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
176 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
138
LENGTH
4:42
DIFFICULTY
23/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 176 BPM
TRADEMARK · BAR 2

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 13 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 23 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. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  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 Trademark use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 6/4 at 176 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 95.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-8, 10-36, 38-40 and 42-92. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Trademark hard?

13 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 23 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 138 BARS ANALYSED