ISRA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Waltz Of Time

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 80-82, 84-86 and 88-90, and 5 more places -- 20% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
119
LENGTH
5:54
DIFFICULTY
27/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
WALTZ OF TIME · BARS 80-81

It is played on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, floor tom and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 15 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how often it moves around the kit.

The whole song is 27 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 90 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  4. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 90, 105 and 120 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 Waltz Of Time use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, floor tom and hi-hat foot, in 6/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 80-82, 84-86, 88-90 and 92-94, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Waltz Of Time hard?

15 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 27 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 179 BARS ANALYSED