Tomas Haake is an amazing drummer. Meshuggah’s music is full of meandering patterns, different rhythms happening at the same time, ideas inside of ideas. Tomas finds a way to make all of the logic and math behind the music feel like controlled chaos, like a V8 engine or Grand Central Station, but in a good way. His playing is meticulous, and his precision makes Meshuggah brutal, but also strangely tasty.



Meshuggah’s new album, The Violent Sleep of Reason, came out on October 7th, but I found out about their new music from a YouTube video of a drum play-through of “Clockworks,” the album’s lead-off hitter. The video blew my mind, but not the same way as last time a Tomas Haake video did that, showing a student the relentless her-tas in “Bleed.” I thought I could use some of the ideas from the song in my own playing, so I transcribed the song. Most of it, anyways.

—

The song (the entire thing is in 4/4!) starts with a 9 beat pattern, which we’ll call (A). I figured it out by counting 3s and 2s:



3s are always a crash with a bass drum followed by two snare “ghost notes;” 2s are filled in either with a 16th note triplet (FRL) or a snare drum accent.



The next section (A’) is the same rhythmic pattern as the first 9 beat phrase, with more emphasis on drums than cymbals this time:

This was the groove that inspired me to transcribe in the first place. There is some serious four-limb coordination going on here: the bulk of the groove is a kick - right - left pattern, but Tomas switches his hands a couple times to be able to add accents on the snare in the right places. It’s easy to forget that he’s keeping 8th notes with his left foot on the hi-hat while everything else is going on, but it’s still going.



The vocals come in after the tom groove, and a new rhythmic idea (B), still 3s and 2s, is introduced.

Tomas plays the rhythm I wrote out above on his snare, and fills in the spaces with two bass drum notes. All together, he’s playing 16th notes in the groups of 3, and 16th note triplets in groups of two. This groove is a little easier to try yourself until you remember to play the quarter notes on the hi-hat.



From there, the same rhythmic pattern is re-interpreted as more of a 4/4 groove (B’). Tomas plays the main pattern with a cymbal and bass drum, and plays snare drum accents on 2 and 4. It’s a tough pattern to memorize in a 4/4 context because the idea is 11 ½ beats long, and doesn’t line up evenly with 4/4 time. You need a lot of mental flexibility to think of the main (B) idea in two different ways: as a series of 3s & 2s, and as a pattern unevenly happening over 4/4 time.



The song goes back into the (B) section again before starting a new © theme, which looks like this:

This theme is made up of 3s & 2s just like the (B) section, but the two note lengths are less jumbled. It’s also orchestrated the same way as the (B) section, with most of the pattern happening in the left hand and feet, while the right hand keeps constant quarter notes.



After the © section, there’s a 16 bar guitar solo, and we have a little bit of time to loosen up and improvise. Tomas plays mostly improvised hits and fills behind the solo, just like a jazz or fusion drummer would comp behind a soloist. But this is still Meshuggah, and while the groove feels a little more free, there’s still a constant dotted 8th note pulse happening underneath the solo. Tomas mostly plays those with his kick, otherwise he catches them in cymbal hits or fills around them.

The solo ends with a sweet fill and the band goes back into (A) before transitioning to the second half of the song. The transition section happens quickly and hints a new rhythm that will be used in the next section (D):

These are the ingredients for the rhythm for the bass drum in the (D) section. The first idea (x) is always played 5 times, but the second idea (y) is played for 4 beats at first, and one additional beat each time, up to 7 beats. While his feet are busy, Tomas plays 8th notes with accents on the beat with his right hand, and snare accents on 2&4. At the end of all of this, there’s a small tag: the (x) idea played 8 times.



Now repeat the whole section, including the tag, before we get to the last new theme (E):

This new theme is actually a hybrid of the © and (D) themes. The pattern is a number of dotted eighth notes, followed by a number of eighth notes, just like the © theme. The specific number of each kind of note is dictated by the pattern in the (D) theme, but with twice as many of each note-length. Instead of always playing 5 dotted eighth notes, now there are always 10, and the number of 8th notes doubles from 4 to 8, 5 to 10, 6 to 12, and 7 to 14. After all of that, play the tag from (D), but twice as long.



Once again, repeat the whole (E) section (no vocals this time). When the vocals return, so does the © section. Play it twice before playing (A’) again, and then a variation I’ll call (A”), which is really just (A’) with the left hand on the rack tom.

—

The form looks like this all together:

A | A’ | B | B’ | B | C | Solo | A | Transition to D

D | D’ | D | D’ | E | E’ | E | E’ | C | C | A’

I’m not primarily focused on the form though, it’s just a helpful guide to understanding the song. I’m mostly interested in the precise but smooth groove in A’, or the tricky polyrhythms over quarter notes in B and C, or the double bass work in D, or the way Tomas chooses when to groove and when to embellish under the solo. Tomas Haake is a master of 4 way coordination, rhythmic multi-tasking, and perfectly appropriate fills. The way he handles the complicated patterns and forms of songs on the new album should be easy for any drummer to appreciate.