EVERYONE ASKED ABOUT YOU · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in sometimes memory fails me sometimes

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-3, 65-72 and 74-80, and 1 more place -- 18.3% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
108 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
109
LENGTH
4:02
DIFFICULTY
65/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 108 BPM
SOMETIMES MEMORY FAILS ME SOMETIMES · BAR 67

It is played on snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 4 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 65 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 81 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 3 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

Tempo goes 81, 95 and 108 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 sometimes memory fails me sometimes use?

A one-bar groove on snare and kick, in 4/4 at 108 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-3, 65-72, 74-80 and 109. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 7 times over the song.

Is the beat in sometimes memory fails me sometimes hard?

4 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 65 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 109 BARS ANALYSED