LA MANCHA DE ROLANDO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Donde Vamos

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-27 and 30-78 -- 75.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
85 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
79
LENGTH
3:43
DIFFICULTY
28/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 85 BPM
DONDE VAMOS · BAR 21

It is played on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 21 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 28 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 64 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, and nothing else. 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 64, 74 and 85 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 Donde Vamos use?

A one-bar groove on snare, kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 85 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 75.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-27 and 30-78. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Donde Vamos hard?

21 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 28 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 · 79 BARS ANALYSED