STEPPENWOLF · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Magic Carpet Ride

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 12-27 and 35-48 -- 30% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
131 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
123
LENGTH
3:46
DIFFICULTY
36/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 131 BPM
MAGIC CARPET RIDE · BAR 12

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 31 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 36 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 98 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 98, 115 and 131 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 Magic Carpet Ride use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 131 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 30% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 12-27 and 35-48. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 11 times over the song.

Is the beat in Magic Carpet Ride hard?

31 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 36 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