KEHLANI · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Folded

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10, 26-30 and 36-102, and 2 more places -- 81.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
136 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
134
LENGTH
3:56
DIFFICULTY
31/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 136 BPM
FOLDED · BAR 10

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 23 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 31 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 102 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 102, 119 and 136 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 Folded use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 136 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 81.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10, 26-30, 36-102 and 104-130, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Folded hard?

23 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 31 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 · 134 BARS ANALYSED