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Beat It (Michael Jackson) · Spëcht

EXERCISE 1 OF 17
Groove C -- Chorus
0 / 142 BARS COVERED
0 / 17 PASSED · 77 BARS LIT · IN THE CHORUS, OUTRO
PART A
CHORUS
VERSE
OUTRO
VERSE 2
3 groovesCDAFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest
GROOVE · 6
RUN · 2
JOIN · 3
LINK · 3
SECTION · 2
WHOLE SONG · 1
ABOUT THIS DRUM PART

How to play Beat It (Michael Jackson) on drums

142 bars of 4/4 at 139 BPM, about 4:05 of playing, on crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot.

70 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

TEMPO
139 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
142
LENGTH
4:05
DIFFICULTY
70/100

The time is kept on the hi-hat the whole way through.

The beat

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-16, 33-39 and 41-43, and 13 more places -- 54.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

    9
    1e+a2e+a3e+a4e+a
HH |X-x-X-x-X-x-X-x-|
SD |----x-------x---|
BD |x-------x-------|
Beat It (Michael Jackson) -- the groove · x hit · o open hi-hat · g ghost note · r cross-stick · X accent

The fills

There are no fills to speak of: the part holds one beat the whole way through.

What the course does

It cuts the song into 16 exercises -- the grooves, the fills, and the joins between sections, which is where players actually come off -- and puts them in the order a teacher would. Each one opens on a reduction you can already play and adds the notes back a rung at a time, with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. The grooves the song is built on -- C, D -- 3 exercises, about 31 minutes. Open above.
  2. Through Part A and the Chorus -- 4 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  3. Through the Verse and the Outro -- 3 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  4. Through the Outro -- 2 exercises, about 29 minutes.
  5. The whole song -- 5 exercises, about 28 minutes.
START THE COURSE ↑

Questions

What BPM is Beat It (Michael Jackson)?

139 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. The room plays it at any tempo from a quarter of that up to the written one, against the record where the record can follow.

Is Beat It (Michael Jackson) hard to play on drums?

70 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 32 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

142 bars, about 4:05 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 16 exercises over 5 sittings, about 29 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

crash, ride, hi-hat, snare, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot. That is most of a full kit; the part moves around it rather than sitting in one place.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 142 BARS ANALYSED