KENNY CHESNEY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in American Kids

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 37-42 and 49-57 -- 23.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
85 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
64
LENGTH
3:01
DIFFICULTY
32/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 85 BPM
AMERICAN KIDS · BAR 37

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 15 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 32 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 64 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 64, 74 and 85 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 American Kids use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 85 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 37-42 and 49-57. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in American Kids hard?

15 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 32 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 64 BARS ANALYSED