SHUGGIE OTIS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Purple

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-56, 61-87 and 93-100, and 6 more places -- 67.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
82 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
193
LENGTH
7:04
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 82 BPM
PURPLE · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 39 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 57 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 62 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. 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 62, 72 and 82 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 Purple use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 82 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 67.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-56, 61-87, 93-100 and 105-119, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in Purple hard?

39 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. 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 · 193 BARS ANALYSED