MARVIN GAYE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Aint no mountain

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 2-4, 6-8 and 10-12, and 3 more places -- 21.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
126 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
84
LENGTH
2:39
DIFFICULTY
42/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 126 BPM
AINT NO MOUNTAIN · BARS 2-3

It is played on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 7 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 42 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 95 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 3 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. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, and nothing else. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 95, 110 and 126 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 Aint no mountain use?

A 2-bar phrase on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 126 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-4, 6-8, 10-12 and 14-16, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Aint no mountain hard?

7 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 42 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 84 BARS ANALYSED