DAVID BOWIE · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in The Prettiest Star

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 2-7, 10-41 and 44-67, and 3 more places -- 94% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

TEMPO
110 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
89
LENGTH
3:14
DIFFICULTY
22/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 110 BPM
THE PRETTIEST STAR · BAR 3

It is played on hi-hat, snare and mid tom, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 11 out of 100 -- straightforward -- and the thing that decides that is how often it moves around the kit.

The whole song is 22 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 83 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, hi-hat 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 83, 96 and 110 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 The Prettiest Star use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and mid tom, in 4/4 at 110 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 94% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 2-7, 10-41, 44-67 and 70-75, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 1 time over the song.

Is the beat in The Prettiest Star hard?

11 out of 100 on its own -- straightforward. The song as a whole is 22 out of 100: straightforward, and the one thing to watch is how often it moves around the kit.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 89 BARS ANALYSED