TONE-LŌC · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Funky Cold Medina

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-4, 6-8 and 10-12, and 7 more places -- 78.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
95
LENGTH
3:10
DIFFICULTY
30/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
FUNKY COLD MEDINA · BAR 2

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 24 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 30 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 90 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, and nothing else. 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 90, 105 and 120 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 Funky Cold Medina use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 78.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-4, 6-8, 10-12 and 14-24, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Funky Cold Medina hard?

24 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 30 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 · 95 BARS ANALYSED