GORILLAZ · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Cracker Island

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-19, 21-22 and 26-27, and 14 more places -- 51% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
97
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
59/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
CRACKER ISLAND · BAR 17

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 55 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 59 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 78 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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 78, 92, 106 and 120 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 Cracker Island use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 51% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 17-19, 21-22, 26-27 and 29-31, and 13 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Cracker Island hard?

55 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 59 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the speed of the hand keeping time.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 97 BARS ANALYSED