THEORY OF A DEADMAN · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Not Meant To Be

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5, 7 and 9, and 7 more places -- 16.9% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
72 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
61
LENGTH
3:23
DIFFICULTY
46/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 72 BPM
NOT MEANT TO BE · BAR 5

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 20 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 46 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 54 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 54, 63 and 72 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 Not Meant To Be use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 72 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 16.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5, 7, 9 and 11, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Not Meant To Be hard?

20 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 46 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 · 61 BARS ANALYSED