YES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Roundabout

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 22-27, 30-33 and 35, and 15 more places -- 17.8% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
133 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
283
LENGTH
8:05
DIFFICULTY
53/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 133 BPM
ROUNDABOUT · BAR 22

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 47 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 53 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 100 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 100, 116 and 133 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 Roundabout use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 133 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.8% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 22-27, 30-33, 35 and 41-42, and 14 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 16 times over the song.

Is the beat in Roundabout hard?

47 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 53 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 283 BARS ANALYSED