ELECTRIC LIGHT ORCHESTRA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Last Train To London

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 26-39, 58-71 and 90-103, and 3 more places -- 53.8% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
121 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
137
LENGTH
4:32
DIFFICULTY
64/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 121 BPM
LAST TRAIN TO LONDON · BAR 26

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 56 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 64 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 79 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 79, 93, 107 and 121 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 Last Train To London use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 121 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 53.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 26-39, 58-71, 90-103 and 105-110, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 3 times over the song.

Is the beat in Last Train To London hard?

56 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 64 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 · 137 BARS ANALYSED