LADY GAGA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Born This Way

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 15-29, 47-49 and 51-57, and 6 more places -- 43% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
123 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
120
LENGTH
3:54
DIFFICULTY
36/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 123 BPM
BORN THIS WAY · BAR 15

It is played on the kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 36 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 92 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.

Tempo goes 92, 108 and 123 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 Born This Way use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 4/4 at 123 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 43% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 15-29, 47-49, 51-57 and 59-64, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Born This Way hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 36 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 · 120 BARS ANALYSED