EKTOMORF · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in War Is My Way (AI)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 47-48, 50-56 and 70-71, and 4 more places -- 18.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
125 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
198
LENGTH
6:20
DIFFICULTY
43/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 125 BPM
WAR IS MY WAY (AI) · BAR 50

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 45 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 43 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 94 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, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 94, 109 and 125 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 War Is My Way (AI) use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 125 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 47-48, 50-56, 70-71 and 83-89, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 21 times over the song.

Is the beat in War Is My Way (AI) hard?

45 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 43 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 198 BARS ANALYSED