THIN LIZZY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Dancing In The Moonlight

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 11-33, 36-58 and 78-100, and 1 more place -- 74.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
144 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
125
LENGTH
3:28
DIFFICULTY
54/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 144 BPM
DANCING IN THE MOONLIGHT · BAR 12

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 43 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 54 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 108 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 108, 126 and 144 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 Dancing In The Moonlight use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 144 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 74.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 11-33, 36-58, 78-100 and 102-125. The time is kept on the kick and crashes to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Dancing In The Moonlight hard?

43 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 54 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 · 125 BARS ANALYSED