ZOÉ · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Azul

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 3-33, 37 and 41, and 28 more places -- 48.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
197 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
153
LENGTH
3:06
DIFFICULTY
43/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 197 BPM
AZUL · BAR 3

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 17 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 43 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 148 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. 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 148, 172 and 197 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 Azul use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 197 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 48.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 3-33, 37, 41 and 43, and 27 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Azul hard?

17 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 43 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 · 153 BARS ANALYSED