MICHAEL JACKSON · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Human Nature TAB

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 10, 12 and 16, and 18 more places -- 22.6% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
93 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
93
LENGTH
4:00
DIFFICULTY
50/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 93 BPM
HUMAN NATURE TAB · BAR 10

It is played on hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 39 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 50 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 70 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, 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 70, 81 and 93 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 Nature TAB use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare, mid tom and kick, in 4/4 at 93 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 10, 12, 16 and 18, and 17 more places.

Is the beat in Human Nature TAB hard?

39 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 50 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 · 93 BARS ANALYSED