PARAMORE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Still Into You

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 21-23, 25-27 and 29-31, and 10 more places -- 28.3% of every bar the kit plays. That is the spine of it; everything else is what happens around it.

TEMPO
136 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
115
LENGTH
3:23
DIFFICULTY
59/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 136 BPM
STILL INTO YOU · BAR 29

It is played on crash, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 13 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many limbs land on the same note.

The whole song is 59 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 102 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 102, 119 and 136 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 Still Into You use?

A one-bar groove on crash, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 136 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 28.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 21-23, 25-27, 29-31 and 33, and 9 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 13 times over the song.

Is the beat in Still Into You hard?

13 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 59 out of 100, a step up from a first song, and the work is in the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 115 BARS ANALYSED