BATUSHKA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Yekteniya VI

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-7, 9-11 and 38, and 7 more places -- 16.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
90 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
86
LENGTH
3:47
DIFFICULTY
93/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 90 BPM
YEKTENIYA VI · BAR 5

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 21 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 93 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 68 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. 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 68, 79 and 90 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 Yekteniya VI use?

A one-bar groove on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 90 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 16.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5-7, 9-11, 38 and 40, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Yekteniya VI hard?

21 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 93 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 86 BARS ANALYSED