KEVIN KAARL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in San Lucas.

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-41, 50-73 and 76-105, and 1 more place -- 77.4% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
183 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
181
LENGTH
3:57
DIFFICULTY
33/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 183 BPM
SAN LUCAS. · BAR 22

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 30 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 33 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 137 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 137, 160 and 183 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 San Lucas. use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 183 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 77.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-41, 50-73, 76-105 and 145-180. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in San Lucas. hard?

30 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 33 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 181 BARS ANALYSED