CAIFANES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Nos Vamos Juntos

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 9-12, 17-20 and 39-42, and 6 more places -- 21.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
123 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
138
LENGTH
4:29
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 123 BPM
NOS VAMOS JUNTOS · BAR 10

It is played on ride, snare, high tom and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 34 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 60 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 92 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. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 92, 108 and 123 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 Nos Vamos Juntos use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare, high tom and kick, in 4/4 at 123 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 9-12, 17-20, 39-42 and 47-50, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Nos Vamos Juntos hard?

34 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 60 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 · 138 BARS ANALYSED