OLIVIA RODRIGO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in obsessed

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-19, 25-27 and 36-43, and 2 more places -- 42.7% 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
84
LENGTH
2:48
DIFFICULTY
35/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 120 BPM
OBSESSED · BAR 5

It is played on the kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 35 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 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.

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 obsessed use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 4/4 at 120 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 42.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5-19, 25-27, 36-43 and 65-67, and 1 more place. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in obsessed hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 35 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 · 84 BARS ANALYSED