MADONNA · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Like a Prayer - album version (AI)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19, 21 and 39, and 22 more places -- 36.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
112 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
151
LENGTH
5:23
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 112 BPM
LIKE A PRAYER - ALBUM VERSION (AI) · BAR 19

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 59 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 60 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 73 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. 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 73, 86, 99 and 112 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 Like a Prayer - album version (AI) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 112 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 36.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 19, 21, 39 and 41, and 21 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Like a Prayer - album version (AI) hard?

59 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 60 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 151 BARS ANALYSED