ED SHEERAN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Castle On The Hill Full

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-20, 31-45 and 47-64, and 3 more places -- 64.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
134 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
143
LENGTH
4:16
DIFFICULTY
21/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 134 BPM
CASTLE ON THE HILL FULL · BAR 1

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 21 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 101 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 101, 117 and 134 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 Castle On The Hill Full use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 4/4 at 134 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 64.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-20, 31-45, 47-64 and 76-89, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Castle On The Hill Full hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 21 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 143 BARS ANALYSED