ENTER SHIKARI · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Find Out The Hard Way… (Album Version)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 17-23, 25-30 and 41-47, and 2 more places -- 19.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
154
LENGTH
4:25
DIFFICULTY
43/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 140 BPM
FIND OUT THE HARD WAY… (ALBUM VERSION) · BAR 18

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 40 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 43 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 105 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, hi-hat 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 105, 123 and 140 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 Find Out The Hard Way… (Album Version) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 140 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 17-23, 25-30, 41-47 and 49, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in Find Out The Hard Way… (Album Version) hard?

40 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 43 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 · 154 BARS ANALYSED