BOB MARLEY · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Stir It Up

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-30, 32-47 and 49-66, and 6 more places -- 92% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
146 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
204
LENGTH
5:35
DIFFICULTY
33/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 146 BPM
STIR IT UP · BAR 6

It is played on hi-hat and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 18 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

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 110 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 110, 128 and 146 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 Stir It Up use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 146 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 92% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 6-30, 32-47, 49-66 and 68-79, and 5 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in Stir It Up hard?

18 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 33 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the speed of the hand keeping time the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 204 BARS ANALYSED