LUDWIG VAN BEETHOVEN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Moonlight Sonata On Piano With A Distorted Guitar In The Background /w Drums

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1, 3 and 5, and 12 more places -- 36.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
190 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
207
LENGTH
4:21
DIFFICULTY
56/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 190 BPM
MOONLIGHT SONATA ON PIANO WITH A DISTORTED GUITAR IN THE BACKGROUND /W DRUMS · BAR 26

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 23 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 56 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 143 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 143, 166 and 190 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 Moonlight Sonata On Piano With A Distorted Guitar In The Background /w Drums use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 190 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 36.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1, 3, 5 and 26-40, and 11 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Moonlight Sonata On Piano With A Distorted Guitar In The Background /w Drums hard?

23 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 56 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 207 BARS ANALYSED