GLUP · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in freebola

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-24, 26-30 and 36-39, and 2 more places -- 63.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
133 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
105
LENGTH
3:09
DIFFICULTY
61/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 133 BPM
FREEBOLA · BAR 21

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 52 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 61 out of 100, so the beat is not the hard part: what costs you is everything around it, the joins and the fills.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 86 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 86, 102, 117 and 133 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 freebola use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 133 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 63.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-24, 26-30, 36-39 and 41-64, and 1 more place.

Is the beat in freebola hard?

52 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 the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 105 BARS ANALYSED