INDOCHINE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Popstitute

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-16 -- 19.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
138 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
93
LENGTH
2:42
DIFFICULTY
34/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 138 BPM
POPSTITUTE · BAR 1

It is played on the ride, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 34 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 104 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 104, 121 and 138 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 Popstitute use?

A one-bar groove on ride, in 4/4 at 138 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-16. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Popstitute hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 34 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 · 93 BARS ANALYSED