MARIO KART · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Mario Kart 8 Main Theme

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 27-31, 33-35 and 74-78, and 1 more place -- 16.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
137 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
98
LENGTH
2:52
DIFFICULTY
85/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 137 BPM
MARIO KART 8 MAIN THEME · BAR 28

It is played on ride, snare, kick and hi-hat foot, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 58 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 85 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 89 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  1. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride 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 89, 105, 121 and 137 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 Mario Kart 8 Main Theme use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare, kick and hi-hat foot, in 4/4 at 137 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 16.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 27-31, 33-35, 74-78 and 80-82. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Mario Kart 8 Main Theme hard?

58 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 85 out of 100. Hard, and what makes it hard is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 98 BARS ANALYSED