YEAH YEAH YEAHS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Spitting Off the Edge of the World

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-20, 37-40 and 73-82, and 7 more places -- 40.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
110 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
116
LENGTH
4:13
DIFFICULTY
33/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 110 BPM
SPITTING OFF THE EDGE OF THE WORLD · BAR 13

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 10 out of 100 -- straightforward -- 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 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 83 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, and nothing else. 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 83, 96 and 110 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 Spitting Off the Edge of the World use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 110 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 40.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-20, 37-40, 73-82 and 85-91, and 6 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Spitting Off the Edge of the World hard?

10 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. 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 · 116 BARS ANALYSED