ENJAMBRE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Dulce Soledad

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 26-32, 34-36 and 38-40, and 5 more places -- 38.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
165 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
146
LENGTH
3:32
DIFFICULTY
61/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 165 BPM
DULCE SOLEDAD · BAR 26

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 58 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 61 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 107 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 107, 127, 146 and 165 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 Dulce Soledad use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 165 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 38.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 26-32, 34-36, 38-40 and 58-64, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in Dulce Soledad hard?

58 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 61 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 146 BARS ANALYSED