I PREVAIL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Violent Nature

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10-11, 14-15 and 19-21, and 7 more places -- 21.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
170 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
91
LENGTH
2:08
DIFFICULTY
82/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 170 BPM
VIOLENT NATURE · BAR 10

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 21 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 82 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 128 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, 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 128, 149 and 170 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 Violent Nature use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 170 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10-11, 14-15, 19-21 and 23-25, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 9 times over the song.

Is the beat in Violent Nature hard?

21 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 82 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 91 BARS ANALYSED