SÄKKIJÄRVEN POLKKA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Финская Народная Песня

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-27, 29-30 and 81-130 -- 44.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
240 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
132
LENGTH
2:12
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 240 BPM
ФИНСКАЯ НАРОДНАЯ ПЕСНЯ · BAR 21

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 51 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 60 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 156 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 156, 184, 212 and 240 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 Финская Народная Песня use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 240 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 44.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-27, 29-30 and 81-130. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Финская Народная Песня hard?

51 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 60 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 132 BARS ANALYSED