AMERICAN FOOTBALL · DRUM BEAT

The drum beat in Uncomfortably Numb (not AI)

The beat the song is built on is one bar, played through bars 1-12, 21-28 and 37-40, and 3 more places -- 50.6% of every bar the kit plays. Learn that one and most of the song is already under your hands.

TEMPO
86 BPM
TIME
4/4
BARS
87
LENGTH
4:03
DIFFICULTY
75/100

The beat, written out

LOOP · 86 BPM
UNCOMFORTABLY NUMB (NOT AI) · BAR 3

It is played on hi-hat, snare and kick, counted in thirty-second notes. On its own it scores 60 out of 100 -- a step up -- and the thing that decides that is the independence between the hands and the feet.

The whole song is 75 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

A part this hard is not learned by playing it slowly and hoping. The room opens it on its simplest reduction -- the timekeeper alone, at 56 BPM -- and adds the notes back over 4 rungs, each with a tempo to reach and a gate to pass before the next.

  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 56, 66, 76 and 86 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 Uncomfortably Numb (not AI) use?

A one-bar groove on hi-hat, snare and kick, in 4/4 at 86 BPM, counted in thirty-second notes. It is written out above, and it covers 50.6% of the bars the kit plays.

Where does the beat come in?

Bars 1-12, 21-28, 37-40 and 49-56, and 2 more places. The time is kept on the hi-hat to start with, and it changes 6 times over the song.

Is the beat in Uncomfortably Numb (not AI) hard?

60 out of 100 on its own -- a step up. The song as a whole is 75 out of 100: demanding, mostly on the independence between the hands and the feet.

READ OFF THE SCORE ITSELF · 87 BARS ANALYSED