TOKIO HOTEL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Ich bin nicht ich

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-7, 25-39 and 57-71, and 1 more place -- 52.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
130 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
109
LENGTH
3:21
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 130 BPM
ICH BIN NICHT ICH · BAR 6

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 54 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 53 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 85 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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 85, 100, 115 and 130 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 Ich bin nicht ich use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 130 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 52.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5-7, 25-39, 57-71 and 85-108.

Is the beat in Ich bin nicht ich hard?

54 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 53 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 109 BARS ANALYSED