KENNY ROGERS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in I Will Always Love You

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 52-78 and 80-91 -- 50% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
83 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
91
LENGTH
4:23
DIFFICULTY
29/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 83 BPM
I WILL ALWAYS LOVE YOU · BAR 53

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 22 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 29 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 62 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 62, 73 and 83 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 Will Always Love You use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 83 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 50% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 52-78 and 80-91. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in I Will Always Love You hard?

22 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 29 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 91 BARS ANALYSED