ARCTIC MONKEYS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in No. 1 Party Anthem

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 19-32, 43-48 and 51-56, and 2 more places -- 26.8% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
115 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
112
LENGTH
3:54
DIFFICULTY
49/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 115 BPM
NO. 1 PARTY ANTHEM · BAR 19

It is played on hi-hat, 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 49 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 86 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 86, 101 and 115 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 No. 1 Party Anthem use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 115 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 26.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 19-32, 43-48, 51-56 and 65-66, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the toms to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in No. 1 Party Anthem hard?

13 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 49 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 · 112 BARS ANALYSED