MADONNA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in American Pie

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-111, 123-129 and 131 -- 85% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
148 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
136
LENGTH
3:41
DIFFICULTY
46/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 148 BPM
AMERICAN PIE · BAR 18

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 38 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 46 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 111 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, hi-hat pulled back to quarter notes. 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 111, 130 and 148 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 Pie use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 148 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 85% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 18-111, 123-129 and 131. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in American Pie hard?

38 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 46 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 · 136 BARS ANALYSED