THEM CROOKED VULTURES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 157-163, 189-199 and 201-203, and 5 more places -- 17.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
107 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
250
LENGTH
9:21
DIFFICULTY
87/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 107 BPM
WARSAW OR THE FIRST BREATH YOU TAKE AFTER YOU GIVE UP · BAR 157

It is played on ride, snare, floor tom and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 73 out of 100 -- demanding -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 87 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 59 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 5 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, ride 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 59, 71, 83, 95 and 107 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 Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare, floor tom and kick, in 4/4 at 107 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 157-163, 189-199, 201-203 and 205-211, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 11 times over the song.

Is the beat in Warsaw or the First Breath You Take After You Give Up hard?

73 out of 100 on its own -- demanding. The song as a whole is 87 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 250 BARS ANALYSED