TOM MISCH · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in It Runs Through Me

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 17-64, 81-96 and 113-144 -- 83.5% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
190 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
144
LENGTH
3:02
DIFFICULTY
46/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 190 BPM
IT RUNS THROUGH ME · BARS 17-18

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 35 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 46 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 143 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 143, 166 and 190 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 Runs Through Me use?

A 2-bar phrase on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 190 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 83.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 17-64, 81-96 and 113-144. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in It Runs Through Me hard?

35 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 46 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 · 144 BARS ANALYSED