BIG THIEF · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Vampire Empire

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-4, 6-8 and 10-12, and 15 more places -- 63.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
128 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
115
LENGTH
3:36
DIFFICULTY
51/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 128 BPM
VAMPIRE EMPIRE · BAR 3

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 17 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 51 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 96 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, 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 96, 112 and 128 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 Vampire Empire use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 128 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 63.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-4, 6-8, 10-12 and 14, and 14 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Vampire Empire hard?

17 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 51 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 · 115 BARS ANALYSED