Thinking Out Loud · Ed Sheeran

176 bars at 158 BPM -- fast, and 4:27 of it without a break -- on ride, hi-hat, snare and kick.

Funk / SoulPop150 BPM and upFour drums or fewerBeginner
TEMPO
158 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
176
LENGTH
4:27
DIFFICULTY
30/100
THE BEAT

One bar, and 86% of the song

The beat the song is built on is a 2-bar phrase, played through bars 17-46, 49-64 and 69-114, and 3 more places -- 85.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and the song is very nearly finished.

LOOP · 158 BPM
THINKING OUT LOUD · BARS 17-18
THE BEAT, WRITTEN OUT →
THE SHAPE

How the song is built

176 bars across 3 sections: 158 keep time and 16 are silent. The longest unbroken stretch of time is bars 17-169.

COUNT-IN
OUTRO
3 groovesBS1AFill into the next barFill that ends a sectionInto the next partStop / hitRest

Questions

What BPM is Thinking Out Loud?

158 BPM, in 4/4, with the time kept in sixteenth notes. At that speed the sixteenth notes are the whole difficulty, so the room will take it down to a quarter of it and climb back.

Is Thinking Out Loud hard to play on drums?

30 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it. The beat itself is 19 out of 100; the rest of the number is everything around it.

How long is the drum part?

176 bars, about 4:27 at the written tempo. The course breaks it into 5 exercises over 2 sittings, about 21 minutes each.

What do I need on the kit?

ride, hi-hat, snare and kick. Nothing in the part asks for anything else.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 176 BARS ANALYSED
MORE BY THIS BAND

Other Ed Sheeran drum parts

EVERY ED SHEERAN CHART →
AT THIS LEVEL

Play something else today

EVERY SONG A-Z →