DEREK AND THE DOMINOS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in It's Too Late

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 4-6, 12-14 and 28-30 -- 20% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
114 BPM
TIME
6/4
BARS
69
LENGTH
3:38
DIFFICULTY
34/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 114 BPM
IT'S TOO LATE · BAR 4

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 28 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 34 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 86 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 86, 100 and 114 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's Too Late use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 6/4 at 114 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 20% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 4-6, 12-14 and 28-30. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in It's Too Late hard?

28 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 34 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 · 69 BARS ANALYSED