ANTI CRAP · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in My Boss

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 14-15, 17-18 and 20-21, and 10 more places -- 34.9% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
270 BPM
TIME
8/4
BARS
139
LENGTH
2:50
DIFFICULTY
30/100

The beat, written out

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 38 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how many notes a second it asks for.

The whole song is 30 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 203 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 203, 236 and 270 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 My Boss use?

A 2-bar phrase on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 8/4 at 270 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 34.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 14-15, 17-18, 20-21 and 23-24, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in My Boss hard?

38 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how many notes a second it asks for the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 139 BARS ANALYSED