YES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Long Distance Runaround

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 34-35, 39-40 and 44, and 8 more places -- 21.1% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
176 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
103
LENGTH
2:19
DIFFICULTY
32/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 176 BPM
LONG DISTANCE RUNAROUND · BARS 34-35

It is played on hi-hat and snare, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 17 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 32 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 132 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. 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 132, 154 and 176 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 Long Distance Runaround use?

A 2-bar phrase on hi-hat and snare, in 4/4 at 176 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 34-35, 39-40, 44 and 48-49, and 7 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in Long Distance Runaround hard?

17 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 32 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 103 BARS ANALYSED