ED SHEERAN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Azizam

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 12-18, 22-31 and 36-51, and 4 more places -- 76.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
129 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
91
LENGTH
2:48
DIFFICULTY
69/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 129 BPM
AZIZAM · BAR 12

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 61 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 69 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 84 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 84, 99, 114 and 129 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 Azizam use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 129 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 76.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 12-18, 22-31, 36-51 and 54-60, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Azizam hard?

61 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 69 out of 100: demanding, mostly on how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 91 BARS ANALYSED