PHIL WICKHAM, CROWDER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in It Really Is Amazing Grace

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-27, 29-31 and 33-35, and 3 more places -- 18.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
128 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
133
LENGTH
4:09
DIFFICULTY
55/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 128 BPM
IT REALLY IS AMAZING GRACE · BAR 14

It is played on the kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 55 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 96 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.

Tempo goes 96, 112 and 128 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 It Really Is Amazing Grace use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 4/4 at 128 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-27, 29-31, 33-35 and 81, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in It Really Is Amazing Grace hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 55 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 · 133 BARS ANALYSED