3 DOORS DOWN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Let Me Be Myself

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 13-39, 41-46 and 53-59, and 1 more place -- 78.2% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
79 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
64
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
38/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 79 BPM
LET ME BE MYSELF · BARS 15-16

It is played on 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 independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 38 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 59 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 59, 69 and 79 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 Me Be Myself use?

A 2-bar phrase on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 79 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 78.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-39, 41-46, 53-59 and 61-63. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Let Me Be Myself hard?

28 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 38 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 · 64 BARS ANALYSED