NO DOUBT · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Sunday Morning

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 13-19, 29 and 31-33, and 4 more places -- 18% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
156 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
161
LENGTH
4:08
DIFFICULTY
57/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 156 BPM
SUNDAY MORNING · BAR 14

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 22 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how many limbs land on the same note.

The whole song is 57 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 117 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. Every note, flat. All the notes, but the hi-hat stays closed and nothing is ghosted or accented.
  3. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 117, 137 and 156 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 Sunday Morning use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 156 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 18% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 13-19, 29, 31-33 and 45-48, and 3 more places. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 10 times over the song.

Is the beat in Sunday Morning hard?

22 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 57 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 · 161 BARS ANALYSED