DAFT PUNK · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Human After All

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 46-60, 78-95 and 97-128, and 1 more place -- 52.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
137 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
152
LENGTH
4:25
DIFFICULTY
62/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 137 BPM
HUMAN AFTER ALL · BAR 46

It is played on hi-hat, snare, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 56 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 62 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 89 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 89, 105, 121 and 137 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 Human After All use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare, floor tom, kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 137 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 52.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 46-60, 78-95, 97-128 and 137-151.

Is the beat in Human After All hard?

56 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 62 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 · 152 BARS ANALYSED