JERIS JOHNSON · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in When the Darkness Comes

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 14-23, 38-40 and 42-47 -- 23.5% 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
98
LENGTH
3:08
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 125 BPM
WHEN THE DARKNESS COMES · BAR 14

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 42 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 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. 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  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 When the Darkness Comes use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 125 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-23, 38-40 and 42-47. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in When the Darkness Comes hard?

30 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 42 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 · 98 BARS ANALYSED