CYNTHIA ERIVO · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Stand Up

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 75-81 and 84-90 -- 19.2% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
80 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
90
LENGTH
4:27
DIFFICULTY
41/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 80 BPM
STAND UP · BAR 76

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 32 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 41 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 60 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 60, 70 and 80 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 Stand Up use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 80 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 19.2% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 75-81 and 84-90. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 14 times over the song.

Is the beat in Stand Up hard?

32 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 41 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how fine the subdivision is the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 90 BARS ANALYSED