5 SECONDS OF SUMMER · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Teeth

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 6-12, 14-21 and 24, and 5 more places -- 84.1% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
139 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
94
LENGTH
2:42
DIFFICULTY
0/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 139 BPM
TEETH · BAR 6

It is played on the kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 0 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how fine the subdivision is.

The whole song is 0 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 104 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.

Tempo goes 104, 122 and 139 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 Teeth use?

A one-bar groove on kick, in 4/4 at 139 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 84.1% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 6-12, 14-21, 24 and 26, and 4 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 5 times over the song.

Is the beat in Teeth hard?

0 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 0 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how little of it repeats.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 94 BARS ANALYSED