MICHAEL MCDONALD · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in I Keep Forgettin'

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 18-20, 22-25 and 34, and 6 more places -- 23.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
96 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
86
LENGTH
3:35
DIFFICULTY
54/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 96 BPM
I KEEP FORGETTIN' · BAR 18

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 24 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 54 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 72 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 72, 84 and 96 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 Keep Forgettin' use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 96 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 23.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 18-20, 22-25, 34 and 38-42, and 5 more places.

Is the beat in I Keep Forgettin' hard?

24 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 54 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 · 86 BARS ANALYSED