SHITASS · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Toot To Shrill

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 30-36, 38-44 and 99-105, and 1 more place -- 17.4% of every bar the kit plays. This one moves around more than most: the beat is where to start, not the whole job.

TEMPO
150 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
160
LENGTH
4:15
DIFFICULTY
60/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 150 BPM
TOOT TO SHRILL · BAR 31

It is played on ride, hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in sixteenth notes. On its own it scores 39 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- and the thing that decides that is the speed of the hand keeping time.

The whole song is 60 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 113 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, ride pulled back to quarter notes. This is the part to know by heart.
  2. As written. Open hi-hat, ghost notes, accents and the crash where they belong.

Tempo goes 113, 131 and 150 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 Toot To Shrill use?

A one-bar groove on ride, hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 150 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 17.4% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 30-36, 38-44, 99-105 and 107-113. The time is kept on the snare to start with, and it changes 15 times over the song.

Is the beat in Toot To Shrill hard?

39 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 60 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