GHOST · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Year Zero

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-19, 21-23 and 25-27, and 9 more places -- 24.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
122 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
147
LENGTH
4:49
DIFFICULTY
66/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 122 BPM
YEAR ZERO · BAR 18

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 50 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 66 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 92 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, hi-hat 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 92, 107 and 122 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 Year Zero use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 122 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 17-19, 21-23, 25-27 and 29-31, and 8 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 18 times over the song.

Is the beat in Year Zero hard?

50 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 66 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 147 BARS ANALYSED