THE BEATLES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 4-36, 38-43 and 46-67, and 3 more places -- 95% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
113 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
87
LENGTH
3:05
DIFFICULTY
43/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 113 BPM
OB-LA-DI, OB-LA-DA · BAR 4

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 28 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 43 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 85 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 85, 99 and 113 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 Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 113 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 95% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 4-36, 38-43, 46-67 and 70-72, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da hard?

28 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 43 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 87 BARS ANALYSED