AMY WINEHOUSE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Back to Black (Accurate Version)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-31, 49-65 and 67, and 10 more places -- 66.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
125 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
119
LENGTH
3:48
DIFFICULTY
24/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 125 BPM
BACK TO BLACK (ACCURATE VERSION) · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat and kick, 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 24 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 94 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 94, 109 and 125 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 Back to Black (Accurate Version) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 125 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 66.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-31, 49-65, 67 and 69, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Back to Black (Accurate Version) hard?

7 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 24 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 119 BARS ANALYSED