BUDGIE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Parents

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 37-39, 55 and 85-90, and 5 more places -- 21.7% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
76 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
189
LENGTH
9:57
DIFFICULTY
68/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 76 BPM
PARENTS · BAR 55

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 31 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 68 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 57 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 57, 67 and 76 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 Parents use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 76 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 21.7% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 37-39, 55, 85-90 and 94-96, and 4 more places.

Is the beat in Parents hard?

31 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 68 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 189 BARS ANALYSED