BRENDA LEE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-26, 29-36 and 53-58, and 1 more place -- 63.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
142 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
72
LENGTH
2:02
DIFFICULTY
54/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 142 BPM
ROCKIN' AROUND THE CHRISTMAS TREE · BAR 1

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 35 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 54 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 107 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. 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 107, 124 and 142 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 Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 142 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 63.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-26, 29-36, 53-58 and 61-66. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in Rockin' Around the Christmas Tree hard?

35 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. 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 · 72 BARS ANALYSED