BEASTIE BOYS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Fight For Your Right To Party

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 6-13, 16-17 and 20-21, and 14 more places -- 45.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
134 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
113
LENGTH
3:22
DIFFICULTY
47/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 134 BPM
FIGHT FOR YOUR RIGHT TO PARTY · BARS 6-7

It is played on crash, ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 39 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 47 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 101 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 101, 117 and 134 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 Fight For Your Right To Party use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, ride, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 134 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 45.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 6-13, 16-17, 20-21 and 24-25, and 13 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 26 times over the song.

Is the beat in Fight For Your Right To Party hard?

39 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 47 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 · 113 BARS ANALYSED