SHAWN MENDES · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Treat You Better (Better Drums)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 25-40, 57-80 and 113-120 -- 45.3% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
165 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
129
LENGTH
3:08
DIFFICULTY
34/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 165 BPM
TREAT YOU BETTER (BETTER DRUMS) · BAR 26

It is played on hi-hat 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 independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 34 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 124 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 124, 144 and 165 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 Treat You Better (Better Drums) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat and kick, in 4/4 at 165 BPM, counted in sixteenth notes. It is written out above, and it covers 45.3% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 25-40, 57-80 and 113-120. The time is kept on the silence to start with, and it changes 11 times over the song.

Is the beat in Treat You Better (Better Drums) hard?

39 out of 100 on its own -- a fair first song. The song as a whole is 34 out of 100 -- a fair first song -- with the independence between the hands and the feet the part that decides it.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 129 BARS ANALYSED