ANDREY BAROKKO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Pretty Ugly

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 7-14, 39-45 and 81-88 -- 24.5% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
140 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
96
LENGTH
2:45
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 140 BPM
PRETTY UGLY · BARS 7-8

It is played on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 63 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 57 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 91 BPM, and adds the notes back a rung at a time -- 4 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. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. 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.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 91, 107, 124 and 140 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 Pretty Ugly use?

A 2-bar phrase on crash, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 140 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 24.5% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 7-14, 39-45 and 81-88. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Pretty Ugly hard?

63 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 57 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 · 96 BARS ANALYSED