Empire State of Mind · Jay Z & Alicia Keys

98 bars of 4/4 at a walking 85 BPM, 4:37 of playing, on hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot.

Hip Hop / ReggaeFunk / SoulUnder 90 BPMFour drums or fewer
TEMPO
85 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
98
LENGTH
4:37
DIFFICULTY
45/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 33% of the song

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1, 3 and 5, and 24 more places -- 32.7% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

LOOP · 85 BPM
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND · BAR 1
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

98 bars across 8 sections: 87 keep time. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 52-85.

PART B
PART D
PART A
CHORUS
PART E
CHORUS 2
OUTRO
OUTRO 2
5 groovesCAEDBFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Empire State of Mind?

85 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. The room plays it at any tempo from a quarter of that up to the written one, against the record where the record can follow.

Is Empire State of Mind hard to play on drums?

45 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet. The beat itself is 47 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

98 bars, about 4:37 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 16 exercises over 4 sittings, about 28 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

hi-hat, snare, kick and hi-hat foot. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 98 BARS ANALYSED
AT THIS LEVEL

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