DARK COUNTRY OUTLAWS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Love Like An Outlaw

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 25-28, 35-40 and 51-52, and 3 more places -- 22.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
100 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
123
LENGTH
4:55
DIFFICULTY
38/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 100 BPM
LOVE LIKE AN OUTLAW · BAR 26

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 25 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 75 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. 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 75, 88 and 100 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 Love Like An Outlaw use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 100 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 22.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 25-28, 35-40, 51-52 and 65-66, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Love Like An Outlaw hard?

25 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 · 123 BARS ANALYSED