MISC COVERS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in September by Earth, Wind And Fire WD

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 11-17, 19-25 and 28-33, and 11 more places -- 76.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
123 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
113
LENGTH
3:40
DIFFICULTY
67/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 123 BPM
SEPTEMBER BY EARTH, WIND AND FIRE WD · BAR 11

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 49 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 67 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 92 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 92, 108 and 123 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 September by Earth, Wind And Fire WD use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 123 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 76.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 11-17, 19-25, 28-33 and 36-41, and 10 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in September by Earth, Wind And Fire WD hard?

49 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 67 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 113 BARS ANALYSED