DOVER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Cherry Lee

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-23, 25-31 and 49-55, and 3 more places -- 62.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
126 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
109
LENGTH
3:28
DIFFICULTY
31/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 126 BPM
CHERRY LEE · BAR 18

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 31 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 95 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 95, 110 and 126 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 Cherry Lee use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 126 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 62.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 17-23, 25-31, 49-55 and 57-63, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Cherry Lee hard?

30 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 31 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 · 109 BARS ANALYSED