WHITNEY HOUSTON · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in I Have Nothing

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-2, 4 and 6, and 45 more places -- 83.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
156 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
239
LENGTH
4:36
DIFFICULTY
34/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 156 BPM
I HAVE NOTHING · BAR 55

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 12 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 34 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 117 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. 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.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 117, 137 and 156 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 I Have Nothing use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 3/4 at 156 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 83.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-2, 4, 6 and 8, and 44 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in I Have Nothing hard?

12 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 34 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 239 BARS ANALYSED