BLACK AND WHITE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Fuck Off

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 20-21, 23 and 30-33, and 10 more places -- 35.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
98 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
131
LENGTH
5:36
DIFFICULTY
58/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 98 BPM
FUCK OFF · BAR 21

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 64 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 58 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 64 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. 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 64, 75, 87 and 98 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 Fuck Off use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 98 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 35.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 20-21, 23, 30-33 and 35, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in Fuck Off hard?

64 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 58 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 131 BARS ANALYSED