MILKY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Just The Way You Are

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-8, 22-51 and 62-96, and 1 more place -- 78.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
130 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
112
LENGTH
3:27
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 130 BPM
JUST THE WAY YOU ARE · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 47 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

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 98 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. 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.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 98, 114 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 Just The Way You Are 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 78.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-8, 22-51, 62-96 and 102-110. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Just The Way You Are hard?

47 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 the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 112 BARS ANALYSED