ONE DIRECTION · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Night Changes

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 28-37, 64-73 and 75-80, and 1 more place -- 50% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
120 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
109
LENGTH
3:38
DIFFICULTY
17/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
NIGHT CHANGES · BAR 28

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 13 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 17 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 90 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. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 90, 105 and 120 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 Night Changes use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 50% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 28-37, 64-73, 75-80 and 95-108. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in Night Changes hard?

13 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 17 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 109 BARS ANALYSED