CHICAGO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Hard To Say I'm Sorry

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 55-109 and 111-122 -- 59.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
179
LENGTH
3:41
DIFFICULTY
19/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 140 BPM
HARD TO SAY I'M SORRY · BAR 55

It is played on ride, high tom and floor tom, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 8 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how often it moves around the kit.

The whole song is 19 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 105 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, ride 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 105, 123 and 140 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 Hard To Say I'm Sorry use?

A one-bar groove on ride, high tom and floor tom, in 4/4 at 140 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 59.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 55-109 and 111-122. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Hard To Say I'm Sorry hard?

8 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 19 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 179 BARS ANALYSED