OLIVIA RODRIGO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in happier

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19, 30 and 32, and 3 more places -- 68.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
85 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
72
LENGTH
2:31
DIFFICULTY
14/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 85 BPM
HAPPIER · BAR 30

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 11 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 14 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 -- 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 64, 74 and 85 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 happier use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 3/4 at 85 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 68.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 19, 30, 32 and 34-53, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in happier hard?

11 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 14 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 72 BARS ANALYSED