THE ALLMAN BROTHERS BAND · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Blue Sky

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-6, 14-19 and 26-50, and 2 more places -- 38.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
94 BPM
TIME
2/4
BARS
166
LENGTH
5:06
DIFFICULTY
52/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 94 BPM
BLUE SKY · BAR 14

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 19 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 52 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 71 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 71, 82 and 94 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 Blue Sky use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 2/4 at 94 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 38.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-6, 14-19, 26-50 and 127-148, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 20 times over the song.

Is the beat in Blue Sky hard?

19 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 52 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 · 166 BARS ANALYSED