ERIC JOHNSON · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Cliffs Of Dover

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 41, 43-45 and 47, and 23 more places -- 22.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
136 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
189
LENGTH
5:31
DIFFICULTY
62/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 136 BPM
CLIFFS OF DOVER · BAR 43

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 42 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 62 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 102 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. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 102, 119 and 136 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 Cliffs Of Dover use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 136 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 41, 43-45, 47 and 81-86, and 22 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 19 times over the song.

Is the beat in Cliffs Of Dover hard?

42 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 62 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 · 189 BARS ANALYSED