MONTROSE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Rock Candy

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 25-26, 29-30 and 49-50, and 7 more places -- 18.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
80 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
101
LENGTH
5:03
DIFFICULTY
54/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 80 BPM
ROCK CANDY · BAR 26

It is played on snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 46 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 54 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 60 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. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 60, 70 and 80 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 Rock Candy use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 80 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 25-26, 29-30, 49-50 and 53-54, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 4 times over the song.

Is the beat in Rock Candy hard?

46 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 54 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 · 101 BARS ANALYSED