RITCHIE BLACKMORE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in I Still Remember

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 4-15, 17-21 and 23-38, and 3 more places -- 95.7% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
70 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
107
LENGTH
5:58
DIFFICULTY
16/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 70 BPM
I STILL REMEMBER · BAR 4

It is played on ride and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 5 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 16 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 53 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, ride 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 53, 61 and 70 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 Still Remember use?

A one-bar groove on ride and snare, in 4/4 at 70 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 95.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 4-15, 17-21, 23-38 and 40-52, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in I Still Remember hard?

5 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 16 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 107 BARS ANALYSED