JOHN RZEZNIK · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Im still here

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-18, 31-36 and 145-150 -- 22.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
111 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
156
LENGTH
4:55
DIFFICULTY
47/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 111 BPM
IM STILL HERE · BAR 8

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 speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 47 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 83 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. 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 83, 97 and 111 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 Im still here use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 111 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-18, 31-36 and 145-150. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Im still here hard?

22 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 47 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 · 156 BARS ANALYSED