AIR · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Milkie Mills

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-28 and 36-81 -- 91.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
77 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
81
LENGTH
4:12
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 77 BPM
MILKIE MILLS · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 47 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is how much of it falls off the beat.

The whole song is 57 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 58 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 58, 67 and 77 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 Milkie Mills use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 77 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 91.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-28 and 36-81.

Is the beat in Milkie Mills hard?

47 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 57 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how much of it falls off the beat.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 81 BARS ANALYSED