DEANA CARTER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Strawberry Wine

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-3, 22-30 and 43-45, and 12 more places -- 44.9% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
62 BPM
TIME
3/4
BARS
98
LENGTH
4:45
DIFFICULTY
41/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 62 BPM
STRAWBERRY WINE · BAR 1

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 12 out of 100 -- straightforward -- 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 47 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. Skeleton. Only the notes that land on a beat. The point is to feel where this bar stands.
  2. Kick and snare, whole. The feet and the snare exactly as written, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 47, 54 and 62 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 Strawberry Wine use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 3/4 at 62 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 44.9% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-3, 22-30, 43-45 and 47-49, and 11 more places. The time is kept on the ride to start with, and it changes 8 times over the song.

Is the beat in Strawberry Wine hard?

12 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 41 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 · 98 BARS ANALYSED