MIHO FUKUHARA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Let It Out

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-12, 34-39 and 89, and 1 more place -- 21.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
88 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
92
LENGTH
4:11
DIFFICULTY
66/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 88 BPM
LET IT OUT · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 35 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 66 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 66 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 66, 77 and 88 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 Let It Out use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 88 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-12, 34-39, 89 and 91. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Let It Out hard?

35 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 66 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 92 BARS ANALYSED