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What is Complexity Rank (CR)?
The complexity rank is a measure of how complex a particular drum beat is, or in other words, how many things are going on in a particular beat. The difficulty of a drum beat is many times related to the beat's complexity but not in all cases. Sometimes there can be a lot of drums being hit making a beat "complex," but the combination and patterns that they are being hit is not difficult. However, in most cases complexity is a fairly accurate measure of difficulty.

Tips for using Complexity Rank (CR)
Find a complexity range that you are comfortable with and attempt those drum beats first. You will find that as you continue to learn new beats, you're complexity comfort zone will increase, allowing you to play more highly complex beats.

How is Complexity Rank (CR) Calculated?
Complexity Rank is calculated using an exclusively objective formula. The formula is as follows...

(1) Count the number of notes in a particular beat. For example, the drum beat below has 7 hi hat notes, 3 snare drum notes, and 5 bass drum notes, which is a total of 15 notes.

(2) Special kinds of notes add to a beat's complexity, such as ghost notes, accents, open hi hats, etc... For each special note there is in a beat add 1/2 to the total from step 1. For example, the drum beat above has one ghost note and one open hi hat. Therefore it has a total of 2 special notes. Each special note adds 1/2 to the total, which makes the total for the beat above 15 + 1, or 16.

(3) Now, figure out how many sixteenth notes could fit in the same amount of measures as your drum beat, assuming that you can only hit one drum at a time. For example, on the beat above, 16 sixteenth notes can fit in the same amount of measures as the drum beat since it takes up one measure in a 4/4 time signature. If there were two 4/4 measures, 32 sixteenth notes could fit. Below is a table of the number of sixteenth notes that will fit in a measure with a certain time signature.

One measure of 2/4......8 sixteenth notes
One measure of 3/4.....12 sixteenth notes
One measure of 4/4.....16 sixteenth notes
One measure of 5/4.....20 sixteenth notes
One measure of 6/8.....12 sixteenth notes
One measure of 12/8...24 sixteenth notes

* A measure of cut time (2/2) counts as 8 sixteenth notes in order to keep the complexity rank consistent.

(4) Divide the total from step 2 by the number of sixteenth notes from step 3 (total from step two / # of sixteenth notes from step 3). For example, in the beat above, our total from step two is 16, and the number of sixteenth notes from step three is also 16. So, we divide 16/16 and get 1. 1 is the complexity rank for the beat above.