BLACK OAK ARKANSAS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Memories At The Window

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 15-87, 137-140 and 145-148, and 2 more places -- 59.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
172 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
171
LENGTH
3:59
DIFFICULTY
64/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 172 BPM
MEMORIES AT THE WINDOW · BAR 15

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 62 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 64 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 112 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 112, 132, 152 and 172 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 Memories At The Window use?

A one-bar groove on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 172 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 59.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 15-87, 137-140, 145-148 and 153-156, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Memories At The Window hard?

62 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 64 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how many notes a second it asks for.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 171 BARS ANALYSED