PAUL DESMOND · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Take Five

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 5-23, 25-31 and 33-59, and 3 more places -- 94.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
168 BPM
TIME
5/4
BARS
179
LENGTH
5:19
DIFFICULTY
27/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 168 BPM
TAKE FIVE · BAR 5

It is played on ride, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 19 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 27 out of 100, so the beat is most of what the song asks for. Get it clean and the rest follows.

How to get it under your hands

The room opens this beat on its simplest reduction, at 126 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 126, 147 and 168 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 Take Five use?

A one-bar groove on ride, snare and kick, in 5/4 at 168 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 94.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 5-23, 25-31, 33-59 and 61-67, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 2 times over the song.

Is the beat in Take Five hard?

19 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 27 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with how often it moves around the kit the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 179 BARS ANALYSED